UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


6 


ji^v^ 


RELIGION 


A  CRITICISM  AND  A  FORECAST 


G.  LOWES  DICKINSON 


NEW  YORK 

McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO. 

MCMV 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
McCLURE,   PHILLIPS  &   CO. 

Pvhlished,  March,  1905,  N 


CONTENTS 


I 

ECCLESIASTICISM,  3 
II 

Revelation,  31 


ii  III 

ir:  Religion,  60 

i£ 

C 

L  IV 

^"  Faith,  73 


208569 


INTRODUCTION 

The  chapters  that  follow  were  originally  published 
as  articles  in  the  Independent  Review,^  and  are  re- 
printed here  by  permission.  I  have  left  them  sub- 
stantially in  the  form  in  which  they  first  appeared, 
for  I  do  not  feel  that  I  am  at  present  in  a  position  to 
improve  them.  But  periiaps  I  may  make  my  point 
clearer  by  a  few  words  of  introduction.  My  main 
object  has  been  to  raise,  definitely  and  unequivo- 
cally, the  question  of  the  relation  of  religion  to 
knowledge.  I  have  urged  that  there  is  only  one 
method  of  knowledge,  that  of  experience  and  legiti- 
mate inference  from  experience.  And  while  freely 
admitting,  and  even  insisting  upon,  the  importance 
of  every  kind  of  experience  as  material  for  analysis 
and  discussion,  I  have  argued  that  any  truth  that 
is  to  be  elicited  from  such  experience  must  be  elic- 
ited by  the  method  of  science,  in  the  broad  and 
proper  sense  of  the  term.  In  other  words,  truth,  I 

*  See  the  numbers  for  October,  1903,  and  May,  June,  and  No- 
vember, 1904. 

vii 


INTRODUCTION 

have  maintained,  is  not  revealed,  in  any  sense  of  the 
word  "  revelation  "  which  can  be  appropriately  dis- 
tinguished from  the  sense  of  the  word  "  science." 
And  though  it  may  be  the  case  that  truth  may  be 
knowable  or  known  about  God,  or  the  soul,  or  other 
objects  of  religious  belief,  it  can  only  be  known,  or 
knowable,  like  all  other  truth,  by  perception,  analy- 
sis, and  inference. 

This,  then,  is  my  first  point;  and  it  is  one  of  great 
importance,  because  it  affects  the  whole  position  of 
the  Churches.  For,  unless  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
revelation,  in  the  sense  of  a  distinct  and  peculiar 
avenue  to  truth,  open  exclusively  to  the  members  of 
the  priesthood  of  a  particular  religious  organization, 
such  organization  can  claim  no  unique  privilege  as  a 
teacher  of  doctrine,  however  useful  it  may  be  as  a 
moral  or  social  influence.  Once  it  is  admitted  that 
religious  truth  is  attainable,  if  at  all,  only  by  the 
method  of  science,  it  must  be  conceded  also  that 
the  notion  of  a  Church  with  a  revelation  of  divine 
truth  is  as  absurd  as  the  notion  of  a  mathematical 
society  with  a  revelation  of  mathematical  truth. 
Truth,  of  whatever  kind  it  be,  may  originate  any- 
where, and  be  communicable  everywhere. 

Supposing  this  to  be  admitted,  I  have  gone  on  to 
a  further  question :  If  religion  is  not  a  special  revela- 
tion of  truth,  what  is  it  ?  And  I  have  suggested  that 
viii 


INTRODUCTION 

there  is  a  certain  attitude  towards  life  which  is  very 
valuable,  and  which,  in  my  opinion,  may  appropri- 
ately be  called  reUgious.  This  attitude  I  have  de- 
fined as  a  reaction  of  the  imagination  upon  the  world 
as  we  conceive  it  in  the  light  at  once  of  truth  and  of 
the  ideal.  This  attitude  it  is  the  object  of  my  third 
chapter  to  expound  and  illustrate.  But  I  recognize 
that  many  people  may  hold  that  the  view  of  religion 
thus  suggested  is  too  wide  and  too  indefinite.  Some 
element,  they  will  maintain,  of  hope  or  faith  is  essen- 
tial; and  they  will  deny  that  there  can  be  a  religion 
of  pessimism.  Such  a  denial  would  appear  to  be 
inconsistent  with  the  ordinary  use  of  language,  see- 
ing that  it  is  customary  to  describe  Buddhism  as  a 
reUgion,  although  it  denies  the  value  of  life.  But  this 
verbal  question  is  not  one  of  great  importance.  The 
important  thing  is  to  consider  whether,  in  default  of 
knowledge,  there  remains  open  to  us  a  legitimate 
attitude  towards  the  objects  of  religion  other  than, 
though  not  interfering  with,  that  of  agnosticism.  In 
my  last  chapter  I  have  suggested  that  there  is  such 
an  attitude.  I  have  called  it  "faith,"  but  with  a  full 
recognition  of  the  ambiguity  of  the  word.  It  has  been 
suggested  to  me  that  my  meaning  would  be  better 
expressed  by  the  word  "hope."  But  that  word,  I 
think,  is  too  weak,  as  the  other  is  too  strong.  What 
I  have  wished  to  indicate  is  an  attitude  of  what  I 

ix 


INTRODUCTION 

may  call  active  expectancy — the  attitude  of  a  man 
who,  while  candidly  recognizing  that  he  does  not 
know,  and  faithfully  pursuing  or  awaiting  knowl- 
edge, and  ready  to  accept  it  when  it  comes,  yet  cen- 
ters meantime  his  emotional,  and  therefore  his  prac- 
tical Ufe  about  a  possibiUty  which  he  selects  because 
of  its  value,  its  desirability.  Such  I  conceive  to  have 
been  the  attitude  of  Plato  when  he  wrote  his  myths, 
of  Wordsworth  when  he  platonized,  of  many  poets, 
and  perhaps  of  many  religious  teachers.  I  think  it 
an  attitude  that  it  is  possible  to  maintain,  though  I 
recognize  the  readiness  with  which  it  might  lead 
into  the  illegitimate  position  of  believing  a  thing  to 
be  true  because  we  desire  it.  I  also  think  it  an  atti- 
tude that  is  good,  for  it  keeps  the  horizon  open.  The 
mistake  of  agnosticism,  so  it  seems  to  me,  has  been 
that  it  has  said  not  merely  "  I  do  not  know,"  but  "I 
will  not  consider."  Such  a  position,  I  think,  is  ham- 
pering, not  only  to  life,  but  to  truth.  For  the  impulse 
to  truth  is  desire;  and  all  discoveries  are  prompted 
by  hope  and  by  faith.  For  this  reason  the  unknown 
may  be  more  important  than  the  known.  Knowl- 
edge itself  may  cover  the  eyes  with  scales;  and  such 
scales  it  is  the  business  of  faith  to  purge  away. 


RELIGION 

A  CRITICISM  AND  A  FORECAST 


CHAPTER  I 

ECCLESIASTICISM 

The  practical  importance  of  religion  in  the  history 
of  society,  the  profound  influence  it  has  exercised 
from  the  beginning  upon  human  development,  the 
incalculable  power  of  its  motives  and  its  sanctions 
over  the  whole  life  of  man,  are  matter  that  now  lies 
beyond  dispute.  Never  again  will  it  be  possible  to 
believe,  as  it  was  believed  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
that  religion  was  a  cunning  invention  of  priests  and 
kings  for  their  own  advantage.  We  know  now  that 
it  has  its  roots  deep  in  human  nature,  as  deep  as  the 
primitive  instincts  and  emotions,  with  which,  in- 
deed, it  is  inextricably  intertwined.  No  one,  what- 
ever be  his  own  beliefs,  can  afford  not  to  take  ac- 
count of  it;  for  if  it  were  nothing  else,  it  is  a  force, 
and,  like  all  forces,  must  be  reckoned  with. 

All  the  more  important  is  it  carefully  and  dispas- 
sionately to  consider  what  ought  to  be  its  place  in 
the  society  of  the  future.  And  such  consideration 
must,  I  think,  fall    under  two  main  heads:   First 

[3] 


RELIGION 

whether  any  religion,  or  which,  is  true;  secondly, 
whether  any,  or  which,  and  under  what  conditions, 
is  desirable  or,  as  some  might  hold,  necessary.  To 
some  minds,  the  second  question  might  seem  to  be 
disposed  of  by  the  answer  to  the  first.  For,  it  may  be 
said,  if  a  religion  is  true  it  ought  to  be  believed,  and 
if  it  is  false  it  ought  to  be  discredited ;  and  there  is  no 
more  to  be  said  about  the  matter.  This  opinion, 
however,  I  do  not  think  is  one  that  is  really  at  bot- 
tom accepted  by  a  number  of  the  most  influential 
apologists  of  religion.  On  the  contrary,  religion  has 
in  the  past  derived,  and  in  the  present  is,  I  believe, 
increasingly  deriving,  a  great  deal  of  support  from 
the  conviction,  not  that  it  is  true,  but  that  it  is  nec- 
essary. And  if  it  be  urged  that  it  is  not  possible  to 
believe  a  thing  to  be  true  because  one  desires  to  be- 
lieve, I  would  reply  that  it  is  possible  at  least  to 
decline  to  consider  the  matter,  to  regard  the  whole 
inquiry  as  ruled  out  by  practical  considerations,  and 
to  support  an  institution  of  which  the  object  and 
function  is  to  perpetuate  a  belief,  merely  on  the 
ground,  whether  or  no  it  be  avowed,  that  the  belief 
is  useful.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  question 
whether  religion  is  desirable  may  be  treated  inde- 
pendently of  the  question  whether  it  is  true  —  nay, 
that  the  answer  given  to  the  latter  may  depend,  not 
in  logic,  but  in  practice,  on  the  answer  given  to  the 
[4] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

former.  And  that  is  my  justification  for  raising  the 
one  issue  independently  of  the  other.  I  propose  in 
this  chapter  to  discuss  the  position,  that  religion 
ought  to  be  supported,  not  primarily  because  it  is 
true,  but  because  it  is  necessary  to  society.  And  in 
this  discussion  I  propose  to  consider  that  form  of 
religion  which  seems  to  offer  most  support  to  the 
position  I  am  examining.  This  form  I  shall  call 
ecclesiasticism. 

By  ecclesiasticism  I  mean  religion  as  embodied  in 
a  Church;  and  by  a  Church  I  mean  an  organization 
which  claims  to  be  the  depository  of  a  truth  other- 
wise inaccessible  to  the  human  reason,  and  which, 
therefore,  endeavors  to  propagate  its  doctrine  by 
appeals,  not  primarily  to  the  reason,  but  to  the  emo- 
tions, the  hopes  and  fears,  the  prejudices  and  habits, 
the  deep-rooted  instincts  and  the  aesthetic  sensibil- 
ities of  men.  It  is  clear  that,  if  this  definition  be  ac- 
cepted, there  is  a  great  deal  of  religion  which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  ecclesiasticism.  All  that,  however, 
I  leave  at  present  out  of  consideration,  not  because 
it  is  unimportant,  but  because,  for  my  immediate 
purpose,  it  is  irrelevant.  For  a  religion  which  rests 
simply  on  the  deliverances  of  an  individual  con- 
science could  hardly  give  a  basis  for  the  position 
with  which  I  am  concerned.  Such  a  religion  is  natu- 
rally anarchic  in  its  tendencies,  and  has  shown  itself 
[5] 


R  E  Ij  I  G  I  O  N 

to  be  so  in  history.  It  could  hardly  form  a  secure 
foundation  for  a  given  order  of  society;  and  is  not, 
therefore,  the  kind  of  religion  supported  by  those  who 
adopt  the  view  I  desire  to  discuss.  An  ecclesiastical 
religion,  on  the  other  hand,  is  essentially  stable;  and 
it  is  this  kind  of  religion  that  people  commonly  intend 
when  they  assert  that  religion  is  necessary  to  society. 
The  position  to  which  I  refer  is  not  so  familiar, 
and  has  not  been  so  ably  and  frankly  expounded, 
in  England  as  upon  the  continent;  and  to  many  Eng- 
lish readers  it  may  seem  strange,  remote,  and  unin- 
telligible. Yet  I  think  it  is  one  which  it  is  of  practical 
importance  for  us  to  investigate;  for  it  may  be  influ- 
encing, half-unconsciously,  many  people  who  have 
never  formulated  or  avowed  it;  and  it  finds  natural 
allies  wherever  there  is  an  established  Church.  Nor 
is  it  by  any  means  among  stupid  people  only  that  it 
finds  its  recruits.  On  the  contrary,  it  commends  itself 
specially  to  those  who  have  been  led  by  their  reason 
to  skepticism,  and  yet  have  convinced  themselves 
that  skepticism  is  dangerous  to  society;  and  these 
have  been  sometimes  men  profoundly  versed  in  hu- 
man nature,  deeply  concerned  for  the  good  of  man- 
kind, of  catholic  sympathies  and  wide  experience. 
The  deliberate  conviction  of  such  men  demands  a 
serious  consideration,  and  I  shall  endeavor  in  these 
pages  to  give  it  the  weight  it  deserves. 
[6] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

What,  then,  is  the  position  ?  Briefly,  I  think,  it 
may  be  put  as  follows :  "  It  is  necessary  to  the  exist- 
ence of  society  that  men  should  observe  certain  rules 
of  conduct;  that  they  should  obey  the  laws,  civil  and 
moral,  should  respect  property  and  life,  should  cher- 
ish the  family,  and  should  honor  the  King,  or  what- 
ever may  be  the  form  of  government;  that  they 
should  be  honest  in  business,  faithful  in  service,  gen- 
erous to  the  poor,  kindly  to  the  weak;  that  they 
should  hold  their  country  dearer  than  themselves, 
and  be  prepared  to  sacrifice  to  it,  on  due  occasion, 
their  wealth,  their  energies,  and  their  lives.  That 
men  do,  however  imperfectly,  conform  to  such  rules 
as  these  is  the  extraordinary,  the  almost  miraculous 
result  of  habit  and  prejudice.  But  how  are 
habits  and  prejudices  maintained .''  Not,  assur- 
edly, by  reason.  On  the  contrary,  reason  is  their 
great  solvent.  Teach  men  to  think  about  the  basis  of 
their  life,  and  it  crumbles  away.  For  reason  is  criti- 
cal, not  constructive;  it  may  destroy,  but  it  cannot' 
create..  The  problem,  therefore,  of  statesmen  is  to 
lay  reason  to  sleep,  so  far  as  fundamental  questions 
are  concerned;  and  for  this  no  better  agent  can  be 
found  than  religion  as  interpreted  by  ecclesiasticism. 
For  a  Church  does  not  doubt,  but  affirms;  does  not 
ask  questions,  but  answers  them.  Suppressing  the 
critical  faculty,  it  masses  in  defense  of  the  founda- 
[7] 


RELIGION 


['\ons  of  society  all  the  emotional  resources  of  human 
nature.  It  not  only  defines  the  end,  it  creates  the  mo- 
tive; and  is  thus,  in  a  profounder  sense  than  the  laws, 
the  bond  of  society.  For  it  is  the  living  spirit,  they  an 
external  mechanical  force.  An  alliance,  therefore,  be- 
tween Church  and  State  is  natural,  if  not  indispens- 
able, and  has  been  felt  to  be  so  by  some  of  the  great- 
est statesmen,  even  by  those  who  themselves  have 
had  no  religious  convictions;  whence,  for  example, 
the  remark  attributed  to  Napoleon  '  If  the  Pope  had 
not  existed,  I  should  have  had  to  invent  him.' " 

The  position  thus  briefly  stated  might  be  copi- 
ously illustrated  from  continental  writers  of  the  neo- 
catholic  school.  I  prefer,  however,  to  quote  an  Eng- 
lishman, and  one  who  will  not  be  accused  of  ecclesi- 
astical prejudices.  In  Burke's  "Reflections  on  the 
French  Revolution"  the  superiority  of  prejudice  to 
reason  is  a  principal  and  constantly  recurring  theme ; 
and  for  the  support  of  prejudice  he  looks  primarily 
to  the  established  Church. "We  Englishmen,"  he  says, 
"  are  generally  men  of  untaught  feelings.  Instead  of 
casting  away  all  our  old  prejudices,  we  cherish  them 
to  a  very  considerable  degree,  and,  to  take  more 
shame  to  ourselves,  we  cherish  them  because  they 
are  prejudices;  and  the  longer  they  have  lasted,  and 
the  more  generally  they  have  prevailed,  the  more  we 
cherish  them.  We  are  afraid  to  put  men  to  live  and 

[8] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

trade  each  in  his  own  private  stock  of  reason,  be- 
cause we  suspect  that  this  stock  in  each  man  is  small, 
and  that  the  individuals  would  do  better  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  general  bank  and  capital  of  na- 
tions and  of  ages.  Many  of  our  men  of  speculation, 
instead  of  exploding  general  prejudices,  employ 
their  sagacity  to  discover  the  latent  wisdom  which 
prevails  in  them.  If  they  find  what  they  seek  —  and 
they  seldom  fail,  they  think  it  more  wise  to  continue 
the  prejudice,  with  the  reason  involved,  than  to  cast 
away  the  coat  of  prejudice,  and  to  leave  nothing  but 
the  naked  reason:  because  prejudice,  with  its  reason, 
has  a  motive  to  give  action  to  that  reason,  and  an 
affection  which  will  give  it  permanenc^'  So  much 
for  the  value  of  prejudice.  As  for  the  means  of  main- 
taining it,  we  read  a  little  later  in  the  same  book: 
"  The  English  do  not  consider  their  Church  estabhsh- 
ment  as  convenient,  but  as  essential  to  their  State; 
not  as  a  thing  heterogeneous  and  separable;  some- 
thing added  for  accommodation;  what  they  may 
either  keep  or  lay  aside,  according  to  their  tempo- 
rary idea  of  convenience.  They  consider  it  the  foun- 
dation of  their  whole  constitution,  with  which  and 
with  every  part  of  which  it  holds  an  indissoluble 
union.  Church  and  State  are  ideas  inseparable  in 
their  minds,  and  scarcely  is  the  one  ever  mentioned 
without  mentioning  the  other." 

[9] 


RELIGION 

Such  is  the  general  theory  of  the  importance  of 
a  Church  to  society  as  formulated  by  one  of  the 
greatest  of  English  statesmen.  But  the  theory  may 
be  further  supported  by  the  lessons  of  history,  and 
especially  by  that  of  the  French  Revolution  —  the 
event  which,  in  fact,  evoked  the  utterances  that  have 
been  quoted  from  Burke.  When  Burke  wrote  the 
storm  had  hardly  broken.  A  gleam  of  sunshine  trav- 
eled in  front  of  the  approaching  thunder-cloud;  and 
while  our  English  prophet  was  raising  his  warning 
voice  the  French  were  dancing  in  their  orchards  in 
anticipation  of  perennial  summer.  The  tempest 
burst;  and  the  reality  exceeded  the  worst  that  Burke 
had  divined.  The  Church  fell,  and  with  it  the  State; 
the  crust  of  habit  broke  and  was  engulfed ;  the  cen- 
tral fire  burst  through.  Every  cruelty,  every  vice, 
every  sordid  passion,  crept  out  of  hiding  and  walked 
the  streets,  jostling  the  rarest  virtues.  Every  distinc- 
tion of  good  and  bad,  true  and  false,  was  obliterated. 
A  patriot  was  indistinguishable  from  an  assassin,  a 
republican  from  a  tyrant,  a  statesman  from  a  buf- 
foon. Despotism  and  anarchy  formed  an  incestuous 
union.  And  over  this  carnival  of  all  the  disintegrated 
elements  of  human  nature  presided  an  opera-singer 
in  the  guise  of  the  Goddess  of  Reason.  No  wonder 
the  English  hugged  themselves  in  their  ancient  or- 
derly routine,  and  swore  with  Burke  that  they  were 
[10] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

"resolved  to  keep  an  established  Church,  an  estab- 
lished monarchy,  an  established  aristocracy,  and  an 
established  democracy,  each  in  the  degree  in  which 
it  exists,  and  in  no  greater!" 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  examples  tending  to 
the  same  conclusion ;  to  point  to  the  political  ruin  of 
Greece  accompanying  the  development  of  philoso- 
phy; to  the  decline  of  Roman  morals  as  the  State 
religion  lost  its  hold;  to  the  anarchy,  political,  intel- 
lectual and  moral,  that  coincided  with  the  Renais- 
sance and  the  Reformation;  to  the  Visconti,  the 
Sforzas,  the  Borgias,  the  hysterical  tragi-comedy  of 
Munster,  and  the  long  agony  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War.  Or,  confining  ourselves  to  our  own  history,  to 
trace  the  decline  of  the  Puritan  ideal,  from  the 
serene  and  starry  radiance  of  Milton,  to  the  dust 
and  ashes  of  Muggleton  and  the  Muggletonians.  It 
would  be  easy  to  do  this,  if  it  were  worth  doing;  and 
all  that  could  be  said  on  such  lines  would  be  true. 
But  it  would  not  be  the  truth.  History  may  be  used 
to  support  any  conclusion,  according  to  the  empha- 
sis of  our  conscious  or  unconscious  principle  of  selec- 
tion. And  a  history  written  on  the  lines  suggested 
above  could  be  met  by  a  rejoinder  equally  convinc- 
ing. We  have  only  to  select  the  bad  instead  of  the 
good  elements  in  stability,  and  the  good  instead  of 
the  bad  ones  in  disintegration,  and  the  whole  phe- 
[11] 


RELIGION 

nomenon  will  wear  a  different  aspect.  For  then  we 
shall  see,  not  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution,  but  the 
iniquities  it  swept  away:  the  starving  peasants,  the 
parasitic  Court,  the  impotent  or  mischievous  admin- 
istration, industry  fettered,  intellect  muzzled,  virtue 
moldering  in  the  dust.  And,  concentrating  our  imag- 
ination not  on  the  delicate  and  factitious  charm,  the 
brilliancy  and  wit  of  the  aristocracy  of  the  Court,  but 
on  all  that  lay  at  the  roots,  and  was  the  condition  of 
the  life  of  that  wonderful  flower,  we  shall  regard  in  a 
different  light  both  the  order  of  society  and  the  or- 
ganization by  which  it  was  supported;  shall  hear 
above  the  Te  Deums  of  the  Church  the  cries  of  the 
persecuted  Huguenots,  and  the  inarticulate  misery 
of  starving  peasants ;  and  remembering  that  the  voices 
raised  in  behalf  of  common-sense  and  humanity  pro- 
ceeded not  from  the  pulpit,  but  from  philosophers 
and  atheists,  shall  turn,  not  in  levity,  but  in  indigna- 
tion, from  Bossuet  to  Voltaire,  and  cry,  with  the 
great  apostle  of  reason,  "Ecrasez  I'infame." 

The  example  is  sufficient  to  indicate  the  fatal  flaw 
of  ecclesiasticism.  Just  so  far  as  it  is  calculated  to 
support  an  existing  order,  just  so  far  is  it  compelled 
to  perpetuate  abuses ;  for  every  conviction  that  repu- 
diates reason  repudiates  also  criticism,  and  therefore 
reformation.  An  ecclesiastical  system  moves,  it  is 
true,  as  a  coherent  and  stable  whole,  but  it  moves 
[12] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

under  the  control  of  fixed  ideas;  and  these,  even  if 
once  they  were  in  accord  with  what  is  good  and  true, 
fall  inevitably  out  of  touch  with  it  by  the  mere  lapse 
of  time.  Of  this  the  whole  history  of  the  Catholic 
Church  is  an  illustration.  That  Church  is  now  com- 
monly regarded  as  one  of  the  great  civilizing  agencies 
of  the  world;  and  I  have  no  desire  to  dispute  its 
claims.  Let  all  that  is  urged  for  it  in  this  respect  be 
granted.  Let  it  be  admitted  that  it  evolved  order  out 
of  chaos,  that  it  civilized  barbarism,  that  it  fostered 
the  virtues  of  charity  and  peace  in  an  age  of  univer- 
sal war,  that  it  kept  alive  the  tradition  of  philosophy 
and  culture,  fostered  the  arts,  disciplined  the  mind, 
and  inspired  the  spiritual  life.  Let  all  this  be  admit- 
ted, and  nevertheless  it  is  true  that  the  evil  wrought 
by  the  Catholic  Church  is  so  incalculable  that  a 
sober  and  impartial  historian  would  hesitate  to  pro- 
nounce whether,  even  to  an  age  of  barbarism,  it  was 
more  of  a  blessing  than  a  curse.  Consider  its  record. 
If  it  has  preached  peace,  it  has  also  filled  the  world 
with  war;  if  it  has  saved  life,  it  has  also  destroyed  it; 
if  it  has  raised  the  spirit,  it  has  also  degraded  it;  if  it 
has  kindled  the  intelligence,  it  has  also  extinguished 
it.  Deliberately  and  in  cold  blood,  in  pursuance  of  a 
policy,  it  has  tortured  the  .souls  and  burnt  the  bodies 
of  men.  Deliberately  it  has  .struck  at  the  root  of  vir- 
tue by  evoking  and  fostering  slavish  fear  and  desire, 
[13] 


RELIGION 

by  promising  a  material  heaven  and  threatening  a 
material  hell.  Deliberately  it  has  invited  men  to  lie, 
and  punished  them  for  adhering  to  the  truth.  Delib- 
erately it  has  arrested,  so  far  as  it  could,  the  nascent 
growth  of  science,  and  thwarted  the  only  activity  by 
which  man  may  alleviate  his  material  lot,  and  set 
himself  free  for  the  triumphs  of  the  mind  and  the 
spirit.  In  saying  this,  I  am  stating  simple  matters  of 
fact,  such  as  no  competent  historian  will  dispute. 
And  the  point  I  want  to  make  is,  that  the  Good  and 
the  Evil  of  the  Church  have  both  proceeded  from 
the  same  principle,  from  the  principle  of  ecclesias- 
ticism.  Because  the  Church  claimed  to  possess  a  rev- 
elation, therefore  it  conquered  the  world,  and  there- 
fore also  it  harried  and  tortured  its  conquest.  Be- 
cause it  relegated  reason  to  a  secondary  place, 
therefore  it  produced  Dante  and  Aquinas,  and 
therefore  also  it  persecuted  Galileo  and  burnt  Bruno. 
Because  it  appealed  primarily  not  to  the  intelligence 
of  men,  but  to  their  fears  and  desires,  therefore  it 
imposed  upon  them  an  authoritative  moral  order, 
and  therefore  also  it  invited  anarchy  when  the  order 
was  superseded. 

For  even  the  anarchy  attributed  to  reason  might 

more  truly  be  attributed  to  the  attempt  to  suppress 

it.  That  it  is  which  divorces  reason  from  experience, 

which  makes  it  revolutionary  and  rebellious,  instead 

[14] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

of  tentative,  cautious,  and  practical;  so  that,  in 
truth,  the  very  order  which  ecclesiasticism  has 
founded  and  sustained  has  prepared  the  chaos  by 
which  it  has  been  succeeded.  For  if  history  shows 
anything,  it  shows  that  an  ecclesiastical  order  will 
not  endure  permanently;  and,  it  may  be  added,  if  it 
could,  such  endurance  would  be  more  fatal  than  any 
amount  of  confusion.  For  every  order  imposed  upon 
the  will  at  the  expense  of  reason  becomes,  in  the 
course  of  time,  whatever  it  may  have  been  at  the  out- 
set, a  chain  that  is  only  the  more  fatal  to  life  if  it  is 
not  felt  to  gall.  To  trust  society  to  the  naked  reason 
is  to  run  the  risk  of  anarchy,  but  to  trust  it  to  eccle- 
siasticism is  to  incur  the  certainty  of  petrifaction. 

With  the  view  thus  put  forward,  probably  most 
Englishmen,  and  even  most  English  churchmen, 
will  be  inclined  to  agree,  supposing  the  premises  — 
the  antithesis  between  ecclesiasticism  and  reason  — 
to  be  accepted.  But  this  antithesis  may  be  denied; 
for  reason,  it  may  be  urged,  is  not  to  be  found  in  a 
pure  and  abstract  form.  It  is  inevitably  biassed  by 
something  that  is  not  rational.  No  one  judges  of  what 
is  good  and  true,  so  to  speak,  in  vacuo,  for  man  is  not 
man  in  the  abstract,  as  certain  philosophers  have 
loved  to  delineate  him,  but  man  here  and  now,  of 
this  century,  of  this  or  that  place,  of  this  or  that  call- 
ing in  society.  He  is  an  Englishman,  or  a  Frenchman, 
[15] 


RELIGION 

or  a  German;  he  has  been  brought  up  in  such  and 
such  a  home,  in  a  slum  or  in  the  West  End,  in  Lon- 
don, in  a  provincial  town  or  in  the  country;  he  has 
been  educated  in  a  public  school  or  in  a  Board 
school,  or,  it  may  be,  at  home;  he  has  been  to  a  uni- 
versity or  he  has  not;  he  is  an  artisan,  or  an  agricul- 
tural laborer,  or  a  miner;  a  professional  man,  a 
politician,  a  journaHst,  or  a  gentleman  at  large;  he 
has  been  in  love  or  he  has  not ;  he  is  married  or  sin- 
gle; he  has  traveled  or  stayed  at  home;  and  the  total 
result  of  all  these  influences  has  been  to  envelop  him 
in  an  atmosphere  which  determines,  whether  he 
knows  it  or  not,  all  his  most  apparently  unbiassed 
and  objective  opinions.  But  ecclesiasticism  is  only  a 
way  of  creating  such  an  atmosphere  dehberately,  in- 
stead of  leaving  it  more  or  less  to  chance;  and  in  so 
doing  ecclesiasticism  is  only  doing,  more  effectively 
and  thoroughly,  what  is  done  by  every  home  and 
every  educational  institution.  A  child  takes  the  col- 
or of  his  en\aronment  at  home  or  at  school  as  inev- 
itably as  he  takes  the  color  of  his  Church.  In  neither 
case  is  reason  the  predominant  or  even  an  important 
factor.  TVTiy,  then,  should  ecclesiasticism  be  singled 
out  among  the  innumerable  non-rational  influences 
for  special  contrast  with  those  that  are  rational  ? 

The  answer  is   that  ecclesiasticism  labors,   delib- 
erately and  of  set  purpose,  to  fix  the  mind  and  char- 

ri6i 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

acter  permanently  in  a  certain  mould  —  so  far,  at 
least,  as  what  may  be  called  fundamentals  are  con- 
cerned. Its  object  is  not  merely  to  give  a  certain  bias 

—  that  is  the  object  of  every  educational  institution 

—  but  to  make  the  subject  immune  against  all  other 
influences  to  which  he  may  be  exposed  in  the  course 
of  his  Ufe.  It  is  not  so  much  the  more  or  less  uncon- 
scious giving  of  a  bent  that  is  in  question;  it  is  the 
giving  of  a  bent  which  is,  so  to  speak,  itself  a  bent  to 
a  bent.  It  is  the  deliberate  effort  to  prevent  a  man 
ever  coming  into  the  rights  of  his  reason  on  the  as- 
sumption that,  in  the  most  important  matters,  the 
reason  is  incompetent.  This  is  a  thing  very  different, 
and  different  in  a  most  important  way,  both  from 
the  unconscious  and  inevitable  action  of  social  envi- 
ronment, and  from  such  direct  or  indirect  inculca- 
tion of  moral  habits  as  must  be  part  of  the  work  of 
any  system  of  education.  For  the  inculcation  of  such 
habits  is  quite  compatible  with  such  a  development 
of  the  reason  as  will  enable  it  in  turn,  when  it  is  ripe, 
to  question  and  to  criticise  them;  whereas  it  is  the 
very  object  of  ecclesiasticism,  as  I  have  defined  it, 
and  as  it  has  historically  existed,  to  prevent  the  rea- 
son from  ever  making  claims  in  the  region  reserved 
for  revelation.  The  reason,  it  is  true,  will  not,  in 
either  case,  be  acting  in  vacuo.  But  in  the  one  case  it 
is   encouraged  —  or,    at   least,    permitted  —  to   act 

[17] 


RELIGION 

within  the  Hmits  of  its  range;  in  the  other  it  is  dchb- 
erately  bound  and  tied. 

The  distinction  may  be  illustrated  by  a  concrete 
example.  An  ordinary  public-school  boy  is  submit- 
ted, while  he  is  at  school,  to  very  strong  habitual  in- 
fluences, to  a  weight  of  public  opinion  more  con- 
stant and  more  powerful  in  its  pressure  than  he  is 
likely  ever  to  meet  with  again  in  the  course  of  his 
life.  Whether  these  influences  are  more  good  than 
bad  I  do  not  at  present  discuss.  What  I  wish  to  point 
out  is  that,  strong  as  they  are,  they  are  not  what  I 
have  called  ecclesiastic  in  their  character;  and  that, 
although  the  services  of  the  Church  of  England  are 
part  of  the  traditional  routine,  these  services  do  not 
—  and  I  believe  I  may  fairly  say  they  are  not  in- 
tended to  —  work  powerfully  upon  the  intellectual 
attitude  of  the  boy.  They  are  rather,  if  anything, 
one  of  the  means  of  preventing  him  from  having  any 
such  attitude.  It  is  the  boast  of  the  school  —  whether 
justified  or  not  is  not  at  present  the  question  —  that 
it  turns  him  into  a  healthy,  instinctive  kind  of  crea- 
ture, decent,  well-mannered,  and,  on  the  whole, 
right-feeling,  but  without  any  intellectual  bias  at  all, 
and  without  any  views  or  prejudices  as  to  the  basis 
of  religious  belief  or  the  authority  of  the  Church. 
Such  a  boy,  transferred  to  the  university,  may  very 
likely  go  through  his  career  there  in  the  same  condi- 
[18] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

tion  of  intellectual  atrophy;  but  if  his  intelligence 
does  awake,  it  will  awake  free.  There  will  be  nothing 
in  the  discipline  of  the  university,  any  more  than 
there  was  in  the  discipline  of  the  school,  to  fetter  it 
—  nothing,  that  is,  except  the  unconscious  and  inev- 
itable influences  of  the  society  in  which  he  moves. 
He  may,  as  he  often  does,  speculate  boldly  on  the 
foundations  of  belief;  may  lose  what  is  called  his 
"religious  faith,"  but  what  very  commonly  is  no  more 
than  a  block  of  unassimilated  ideas,  laid  down  like 
a  pavement  over  the  springs  of  religion  by  years  of 
habitual  but  passive  church-going;  may  question 
moral  intuitions  commonly  supposed  to  be  funda- 
mental; and,  after  many  mistakes  and  blunders,  may 
emerge  from  it  all  a  really  useful  and  stimulating 
person,  with  some  chance  of  contributing  his  mite 
to  the  clarification  of  ethical,  social,  and  religious 
ideas. 

But,  now,  imagine  that  the  public  schools  and  the 
universities  were  to  adopt  the  ecclesiastical  position; 
that  they  were  to  fall  into  a  state  of  panic  over  the 
decline  of  religious  belief,  and  to  have  recourse  to 
ecclesiastical  machinery  to  remedy  it.  From  that 
moment  everything  would  be  transformed.  Just  so 
far  as  the  system  were  successful,  just  so  far  would 
the  public-school  boy  be  converted  from  a  healthy 
barbarian  into  a  hypocrite,  a  fanatic,  or  a  saint.  The 
[19] 


RELIGION 


chapel  services,  instead  of  being,  as  they  are  now, 
merely  a  part  of  the  discipline  of  the  school,  would 
become  real  instruments  of  propaganda.  Every 
agency  of  rhetoric,  of  ritual,  of  emotional  and  sen- 
suous appeal,  would  be  brought  to  bear,  to  make 
him  feel  and  assimilate,  with  his  whole  being,  what 
would  rapidly  cease  to  be  the  intellectual  proposi- 
tions, and  come  to  be  the  instinctive  belief,  that  the 
Church  is  of  divine  authority,  that  it  has  a  final  and 
immutable  revelation  of  truth,  that  in  philosophy, 
in  ethics,  in  social  institutions,  the  last  word  has  been 
said,  and  that  the  function  of  the  present  is  simply  to 
apply,  to  the  changing  conditions  of  life,  the  known, 
fundamental,  and  eternal  truths.  At  the  university  he 
would  be  subjected  to  the  same  influences.  His  whole 
training  would  be  conditioned  by  the  rule,  that  there 
is  to  be  no  inquiry  into  the  foundations  of  belief. 
And  the  result  would  be  that  the  universities  would 
turn  out  year  after  year  a  succession  of  able,  highly- 
educated  men,  whose  one  aim,  so  far  as  they  had  a 
public  aim  at  all,  would  be  to  preserve  and  perpetu- 
ate those  institutions  and  ideas  which  it  had  been 
the  object  of  their  whole  training  to  impress  auto- 
matically upon  their  minds.  Henceforth  they  would 
be  hermetically  sealed  against  the  bacilli  of  new  ex- 
perience. Argument,  feeling,  touch,  sight,  would  avail 
them  nothing.  Whatever  might  act  as  a  solvent  upon 
[20] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

the  structure  of  their  ideas  would  be  met  simply  as 
an  enemy.  Polemics  would  be  their  only  method  of 
controversy;  and,  though  they  might  be  able  to  con- 
vert, they  would  be  unable  to  convince,  just  as  they 
would  be  unable  to  be  convinced,  because  they 
would  be  unable  to  conceive  that  their  adversary 
might  be  right. 

If  this  account  of  an  ecclesiastical  education  be 
thought  to  be  fanciful  or  exaggerated,  I  would  ask 
the  reader  to  recall  the  discipline  devised  for  the 
propagation  of  his  Order  by  one  who  was,  perhaps, 
the  greatest  ecclesiastical  genius  the  world  has  ever 
known;  I  mean  the  founder  of  the  Society  of  Jesus. 
The  training  of  a  Jesuit  as  prescribed  in  the  famous 
Institutes  was  based  upon  a  process  which  a  modern 
man  of  science  might  describe  as  self-hypnotization. 
By  intense  and  solitary  meditation,  accompanied  by 
physical  exercises,  by  fastings,  flagellations,  postures, 
groanings,  weepings,  he  forced  himself,  so  far  as  pos- 
sible, to  realize,  to  re-enact  in  his  own  person,  the 
Passion  of  Christ,  to  ascend  with  Him  to  heaven,  to 
taste,  in  anticipation,  the  joys  of  His  kingdom,  and 
to  share  the  tortures  of  the  damned  in  hell.  Not  the 
imagination  only,  and  the  intelligence,  but  almost 
the  very  physical  senses  were  compelled  to  co-oper- 
ate in  this  deliberate  hallucination.  He  must  not  only 
think  and  conceive;  he  must  hear,  see,  touch,  and 
[21] 


RELIGION 

taste.  The  whole  personahty,  intellectual,  moral  — 
one  might  almost  say  physical  — was  run  in  this  way 
into  a  final  mold.  That  it  should  take  that  shape, 
uncritically,  passively,  not  of  conviction,  but  of  force, 
was  the  essence  of  the  whole  process.  But  once  that 
was  achieved,  development  was  permitted  and  en- 
couraged along  the  lines  thus  rigidly  prescribed. 
The  mind  henceforth  was  the  tool  of  unquestioning 
faith.  It  might  calculate,  but  it  must  not  reason;  it 
might  devise  means,  but  it  must  not  consider  ends. 
Every  accomplishment  the  Jesuit  may  and  should 
acquire;  he  should  be  a  linguist,  a  mathematician,  a 
man  of  science  perhaps,  above  all  a  man  of  the  world, 
accomplished,  pohte,  persuasive,  plausible,  up  to 
date  in  his  knowledge,  his  methods,  his  arts;  he  may 
be  anything  and  everything,  so  long  as  he  does  not 
think,  and  obeys.  He  may  study  history  as  much  as 
he  likes,  but  it  must  be  history  as  interpreted  by  the 
Church;  he  may  study  Latin  and  Greek,  provided 
that  he  remains  insensible  to  the  classical  spirit;  he 
may  study  science,  so  long  as  he  does  not  permit  it  to 
react  upon  theology.  Nay,  all  these  things  he  ought 
to  study,  in  order  that  he  may  meet  the  enemy  on  his 
own  ground.  Only  that  the  enemy  is  the  enemy,  that 
the  truth  is  the  truth,  that  the  Church  is  the  Church, 
and  that  his  whole  duty  is  to  subordinate  to  the  in- 
terest of  bis  Order  all  his  powers,  spiritual,  intellec- 
[22] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

tual,  moral,  and  physical  —  this  is  the  never-forgot- 
ten command  of  his  hypnotic  dream,  of  the  fixed 
idea  branded  upon  him  at  the  outset  of  his  career  by 
the  deliberately  non-rational  discipline  to  which  he 
'  has  been  subjected.  Once  for  all  he  has  been  cured  of 
/  the  possibility  of  asking,"  Why  ?  "  His  reason  has  not 
I  been  killed.  No!  It  has  been  chained  to  the  car  of 
Faith ;  and  in  the  car  rides  theology  triumphant,  sur- 
rounded by  the  saints  of  the  Order,  and  crushing 
under  the  wheels  the  heretic,  the  speculator,  and  the 
unbeliever. 

The  example,  it  will  perhaps  be  admitted,  is  suffi- 
cient to  prove  that  there  is  an  antagonism  between 
ecclesiasticism  and  reason  different  in  kind  from 
that  which  exists  between  reason  and  any  ordinary 
prejudice;  that  it  is  the  object  of  an  ecclesiastical 
system  not  merely  to  create  an  atmosphere,  but  to 
paralyze  beforehand  the  agency  by  which  that  at- 
mosphere might  be  disturbed;  with  the  result,  no 
doubt,  of  encouraging  stability,  but  only  at  the  cost 
of  arresting  growth.  But  it  may  be  said  that  eccle-  / 
siasticism,  as  I  have  defined  it,  has  ceased  to  exist, 
or,  at  least,  has  no  future  before  it.  If  I  thought  that, 
I  should  not  have  troubled  to  write  this  chapter.  But 
it  is  not,  I  believe,  a  view  that  is  borne  out  by  a  sur- 
vey of  contemporary  history.  On  the  Continent,  at 
any  rate,  the  battle  between  ecclesiasticism  and  rea- 
[23] 


RELIGION 


son  appears  to  be  raging  with  an  intensity  of  which 
we  in  this  country  have  Httle  conception.  And,  even 
in  England,  is  it  so  clear  that  the  issue  has  not  been 
raised  ?  The  Church  of  England,  I  readily  admit, 
has  not  commonly  been  ecclesiastic  in  the  extreme 
and  uncompromising  sense  in  which  I  have  been 
using  the  term.  It  has  been,  on  the  whole,  and  in 
comparison  with  the  Church  of  Rome,  a  friend  of 
compromise  and  of  common-sense.  But  it  will  be 
admitted  that  of  late  years  it  has  been  animated  by 
a  spirit  very  different  from  that  which  inspired  it 
during  the  eighteenth,  and  for  the  most  part  during 
the  nineteenth,  century.  Whether  or  no,  from  certain 
points  of  view,  that  spirit  may  be  judged  to  be  better 
than  the  old  one,  I  am  not  at  present  concerned  to 
dispute.  I  can  believe  that  it  is  more  zealous,  more 
active,  more  devoted,  more  fruitful  in  a  certain  kind 
of  result;  but  I  am  sure,  and  that  is  the  point  with 
which  I  am  concerned,  that  it  is  more  ecclesiastic. 
Every  day  it  appears  more  and  more  to  make  the 
kind  of  claims  that  are  made  by  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic Church,  every  day  more  and  more  to  develop  a 
similar  machinery  for  silencing,  by  emotional  ap- 
peals, the  protests  of  the  reason.  While  preserving 
the  social  and  other  advantages  of  the  establishment, 
it  is  apparently  determined  not  to  acquiesce  in  the 
accompanying  restraints.  Now,  just  so  far  as  the 
[24] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

Church  of  England  adopts  this  attitude,  just  so  far  as 
it  assimilates  itself  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  just  so  far 
is  it  alienating  from  itself  not  merely  that  large  and 
increasing  section  of  thoughtful  Englishmen  who 
cannot,  except  by  courtesy,  be  called  Christians 
(though  they  certainly  cannot  fairly  be  described  as 
irreligious),  but  also  the  whole  body  of  Christian 
thought  and  sentiment  included  in  the  various  Non- 
conformist bodies.  A  militant  Church,  confident  in 
its  mission,  will,  of  course,  regard  such  a  statement 
rather  as  a  challenge  than  as  a  warning.  It  will  go  in 
and  fight,  and  expect  to  win.  Only  let  it  not  suppose 
that  the  challenge  so  made  will  not  be  taken  up. 
Many  who  would  be  glad  to  be  relieved  of  the  duty 
of  setting  themselves  in  antagonism  to  the  Church, 
who  feel  to  the  full  the  appeal  of  its  historical  asso- 
ciations, to  whom  its  ritual,  its  architecture,  the  very 
rooks  amongst  its  ancient  elms,  preach  in  every  vil- 
lage and  town  with  an  eloquence  the  more  poignant 
and  profound  that  it  is  half-stifled  in  the  smoke,  the 
din,  the  multitudinous  squalor  of  this  age  of  futile 
industry  —  many,  I  say,  who  do  not  accept  Chris- 
tianity, and  who  yet  would  be  loth  to  attack  the 
Christian  Church,  will  be,  and  are  being,  daily 
driven  into  an  attitude  of  hostility  by  the  new  eccle- 
siastical policy  and  methods.  The  Church,  it  would 
seem,  has  before  it  —  I  hardly  know  whether  I 
[25] 


RELIGION 

ought  to  say  *'  has" —  two  courses  sharply  contrasted 
and  defined;  and  the  future  of  the  spiritual  life  of 
England  will,  I  believe,  be  largely  determined  by  its 
choice,  if  choice  is  still  open  to  it.  Either,  while  pre- 
serving its  organization  intact,  and  the  tradition  of 
its  forms  and  ritual,  it  may  develop  its  intellectual 
position  in  the  broad  daylight,  in  full  and  candid 
intercourse  with  the  reasoned  convictions  of  men, 
and  with  their  developing  moral  experience  —  and 
this,  I  take  it,  is  the  attitude  of  what  is,  or  was,  the 
Broad  Church  —  or,  reverting  to  the  position  of  a 
final  and  exclusive  revelation,  claiming,  not  merely 
a  continuity  of  tradition,  but  an  identity  of  funda- 
mental doctrine  with  the  mediaeval  Church,  insist- 
ing on  a  special  and  privileged  position  as  the  inter- 
preter of  God  to  man,  repudiating  philosophy,  and 
so  much  of  science  as  cannot  be  reconciled  with  its 
dogmas,  and  appealing  always,  in  the  last  resort,  not 
to  reason  and  experience,  but  to  authority,  it  may 
set  itself,  as  the  Church  of  Rome  has  done,  across 
the  whole  intellectual  movement  of  the  age,  and  play 
for  a  supremacy  over  the  conscience  and  the  spiritual 
life  deliberately  based  on  supernatural  claims,  sup- 
ported and  reinforced  by  the  Confessional  and  Mass. 
What  may  be  the  issue  of  the  conflict  thus  provoked 
I  do  not  care  to  predict.  I  know  only  that,  should  the 
Church  be  victorious,  it  will  have  saved  society  from 
[26] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

the  possibility  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  anarchy, 
only  at  the  cost  of  arresting  the  growth  of  science, 
the  development  of  the  conscience,  and  all  the  hopes 
of  a  new  and  happier  order  which  have  been  the  in- 
spiration of  the  noblest  minds  of  the  past  century. 

It  is  the  issue  thus  adumbrated  that  gives  a  more 
than  temporary  interest  to  the  controversy  still  rag- 
ing in  connection  with  the  recent  Education  Act. 
The  reason  why  the  continued  control  by  the  Church 
of  more  than  half  the  elementary  schools  in  the  coun- 
try is  regarded  with  grave  mistrust  by  many  who  are 
not  animated  by  the  jealousy  of  rival  sects  is  simply 
the  avowed  determination  of  leading  champions  of 
the  Church  to  use  their  power  in  the  interest  of  eccle- 
siasticism.  They  hope  to  lay  the  foundation  of  their 
control  over  the  intelligence  of  the  country  by  bring- 
ing up  a  generation  imbued  from  its  earliest  years 
with  an  instinctive  and  non-rational  conviction  of  the 
authority  of  the  Church,  the  efficacy  of  its  sacra- 
ments, and  the  truth  of  its  theology.  This,  and  this 
only,  can  be  meant  by  the  creation  of  an  "  atmos- 
phere"; this,  and  this  only,  by  the  expressed  hope 
that  the  school  may  have  a  door  opening  into  the 
Church.  To  begin  so  is  to  start  upon  the  inclined 
plane  which  leads  to  a  completely  developed  system, 
such  as  that  which  was  elaborated  by  the  Jesuits. 
Whether  the  attempt  is  likely  to  be  successful  in  Eng- 
[27] 


RELIGION 

land  I  do  not  pronounce;  but  I  am  sure  that  it  is  one 
that  the  EngUsh,  if  they  are  true  to  their  history, 
should  resist  to  the  uttermost. 

I  have  thus  stated  briefly,  and,  I  hope,  not  intem- 
perately,  what  appear  to  me  to  be  the  vaHd  objec- 
tions to  ecclesiasticism  and  to  its  intrusion  into  our 
schools.  And  if,  in  conclusion,  I  be  asked,  What, 
then,  should  be  the  aim  of  an  educational  system  ?  I 
would  reply.  To  surround  a  child  with  all  the  influ- 
ences which  society  may  judge  to  be  healthy  for  body 
and  soul,  while  at  the  same  time  training  the  under- 
standing to  become,  when  it  is  ripe,  the  critic  and 
judge  of  those  influences.  The  position  has  been  put 
once  for  all  by  Plato,  in  a  passage  which  ought  to  be 
inscribed  over  the  door  of  every  school  in  the  king- 
dom. Plato,  it  is  true,  presupposes,  what  is  also  pre- 
supposed by  the  Church,  that  the  atmosphere  to 
which  the  children  would  be  subjected  in  his  ideal 
commonwealth  would  be  the  right  and  true  one,  so 
that  the  reason,  when  it  awoke,  would  inevitably 
approve  the  discipline  to  which  it  had  been  subjected 
while  it  slept.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  concurrently 
with  the  training  of  healthy  instincts  and  percep- 
tions, he  postulates  a  free  and  liberal  development 
of  the  understanding,  and  leaves  to  that  the  last  word 
on  the  legitimacy  of  the  whole  process.  Here  is  the 
passage  —  one  that  goes  far  beyond  the  scope  of  our 
[28] 


ECCLESIASTICISM 

contemporary  disputes,  and  might  well  serve  as  an 
inspiration,  not  only  to  the  Church,  but  to  all  who 
have  in  any  degree  the  control  of  our  national  edu- 
cation : 

"We  would  not  have  our  Guardians  grow  up 
amid  images  of  moral  deformity  as  in  some  noxious 
pasture,  and  there  browse  and  feed  upon  many  a 
baneful  herb  and  flower  day  by  day,  little  by  little, 
until  they  silently  gather  a  festering  mass  of  corrup- 
tion into  their  own  souls.  Let  our  Artists  rather  be 
those  who  are  gifted  to  discern  the  true  nature  of  the 
beautiful  and  graceful :  then  will  our  youth  dwell  in  a 
land  of  health,  amid  fair  sights  and  sounds,  and  re- 
ceive the  good  in  everything;  and  beauty,  the  efflu- 
ence of  fair  works,  shall  flow  into  the  eye  and  ear, 
like  a  health-giving  breeze  from  a  purer  region,  and 
insensibly  draw  the  soul  from  earliest  years  into  like- 
ness and  sympathy  with  the  beauty  of  reason." 

"  There  can  be  no  nobler  training  than  that,"  he 
replied. 

"And  therefore,"  I  said,  "Glaucon,  musical  train- 
ing is  a  more  potent  instrument  than  any  other,  be- 
cause rhythm  and  harmony  find  their  way  into  the 
inward  places  of  the  soul,  on  which  they  mightily 
fasten,  imparting  grace,  and  making  the  soul  of  him 
who  is  rightly  educated  graceful,  or  of  him  who  is 
ill-educated  ungraceful;  and  also  because  he  who 
[29] 


RELIGION 

has  received  this  true  education  of  the  inner  being 
will  most  shrewdly  perceive  omissions  or  faults  in  art 
and  nature,  and,  with  a  true  taste,  while  he  praises 
and  rejoices  over  and  receives  into  his  own  soul  the 
good,  and  becomes  noble  and  good,  he  will  justly 
blame  and  hate  the  bad,  now  in  the  days  of  his  youth, 
even  before  he  is  able  to  know  the  reason  why:  and, 
when  reason  comes,  he  will  recognize  and  salute  the 
friend  with  whom  his  education  has  long  made  him 
familiar. "  * 

With  what  a  breath  of  the  air  of  dawn,  what  a 
gleam  of  Mediterranean  light,  do  these  words  come 
wafting,  as  in  a  blue  heaven,  over  the  delirious  fumes 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  to  remind  us  of  what  men  were 
before  they  had  learned  to  distrust  their  own  fairest 
impulses  and  instincts,  and  to  seek  in  authority  the 
Good  and  the  True  which  it  is  their  pri\dlege  to 
divine  through  experience.  With  this  passage  sound- 
ing in  our  ears,  I  am  content  to  leave  the  subject. 
For  the  spirit  of  Greece  is  the  antithesis  of  the  spirit 
of  ecclesiasticism.  And  those  who  regard  the  latter  as 
a  danger  could  seek  no  better  prophylactic  than  a 
wider  and  more  popular  dissemination  of  Greek 
culture. 

*  Translation  by  Davies  and  Vaiighan. 


[30] 


CHAPTER  II 

REVELATION 

In  discussing,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  what  I  have 
called  ecclesiasticism,  I  defined  it  as  religion  embod- 
ied in  a  Church ;  and  a  Church  I  defined  as  an  organ- 
ization which  claims  to  be  the  depository  of  a  truth 
otherwise  inaccessible  to  the  human  reason.  I  offered 
some  arguments  tending  to  show  that  the  existence  of 
such  organizations  —  at  any  rate,  when  they  adopt 
to  the  full  the  logical  consequences  of  their  position 
—  has  been,  and  perhaps  still  is,  a  grave  danger  to 
society.  But  I  did  not  in  that  discussion  approach  the 
more  fundamental  question  of  the  nature  and  justi- 
fication of  the  claim  to  possess  an  authority  indepen- 
dent of,  an  superior  to,  reason,  and  the  connection  of 
religion  with  such  a  claim.  It  is  this  question  which  I 
propose  to  discuss  in  the  present  chapter. 

In  doing  so,  I  shall  have  to  venture  boldly  and 
without  reserve  upon  topics  which  it  is  customary  to 
treat  with  a  reticence  hardly  compatible  with  com- 
plete honesty.  Perhaps,  therefore,  I  may  be  permitted 
[81] 


RELIGION 

at  the  outset  to  express  my  regret  should  anything  I 
may  say  give  offense  to  the  rehgious  instinct  of  any 
of  my  readers.  Nothing  is  further  from  my  intention 
or  desire;  and,  indeed,  I  hardly  believe  that  it  will  be 
those  who  have  the  finest  sense  of  religion  that  will 
be  the  most  inclined  to  resent  my  candor.  Rather  it 
is  precisely  they  who  will  be  the  most  willing  to  in- 
vestigate the  ground  and  nature  of  their  belief,  and 
who  will  repudiate  the  application  to  this  momen- 
tous question  of  a  method  of  hushing  up  and  slurring 
over  which  they  would  deprecate  in  any  of  the  ordi- 
nary business  of  life.  Such  readers,  I  think,  will  not 
receive  what  I  have  to  say  in  a  spirit  of  hostility,  how- 
ever profoundly  they  may  disagree  with  it.  And 
should  they,  as  may  very  probably  be  the  case,  find 
my  treatment  to  be  more  summary  and  dogmatic 
than  comports  with  the  difficulty  of  the  subject,  I  will 
ask  them  to  remember  that  I  am  sacrificing  much 
that  might  otherwise  be  desirable  to  the  effort  to 
state  precisely  and  clearly  an  issue  which,  as  I  think, 
is  precedent  to  all  theology,  and  vital  to  all  religion. 

That  issue  I  would  put,  in  a  preliminary  way,  as 
follows : 

"  Is  there  a  way  of  attaining  truth  about  real  exist- 
ences which  is  different  in  kind  from  the  method  of 
science  or  of  philosophy  —  which  depends  not  upon 
direct  perception,  internal  or  external,  clarified  by 
[32] 


REVELATION 

analysis,  tested  by  comparison,  and  supplemented 
by  inference,  but  upon  some  peculiar  and  unique 
intuition  having  a  validity  superior  to  any  other,  and 
not  properly  subject  to  the  ordinary  critical  tests  ? ' ' 
Some  such  way  of  attaining  truth  seems  to  be  im- 
plied in  what  is  called  revelation.  And  it  is  the  claim 
to  rest  upon  revelation  that  gives  to  religion,  as  it  is 
commonly  conceived,  a  unique  and  peculiar  place 
among  the  forms  of  human  activity.  It  is  that  which 
underlies  the  exceptional  position  assumed  by 
Churches,  and  gives  an  exceptional  weight  to  partic- 
ular books.  And,  though  I  do  not  myself  think  that 
religion  depends  upon  revelation,  yet  its  character 
cannot  fail  to  be  profoundly  modified  by  our  accept- 
ance or  rejection  of  such  an  avenue  to  truth.  The 
question,  therefore,  which  I  propose  to  put  is  one  of 
great  importance.  It  is  the  question  whether  the  idea 
of  revelation  can  be  made  to  agree  with  the  normal 
intellectual  assumptions  of  the  twentieth  century; 
and  we  may,  perhaps,  best  approach  it  if  we  begin 
by  asking  what  kind  of  truth  it  is  that  is  supposed  to 
he  communicable  by  revelation,  and  not  communi- 
cable by  other  methods ;  for  by  taking  this  point  first 
we  shall  be  able  to  narrow  the  field  of  inquiry. 

Now,  if  we  consider  the  great  religions  of  history, 
and  especially  Christianity,  with  which  we  in  Europe 
are  most  immediately  concerned,  it  appears  that  they 
[33] 


u 


R  K  L  I  G  I  O  N 

include  in  their  revelation  two  distinct  kinds  of  infor- 
mation: the  first  dealing  with  matters  of  fact  stated 
to  have  occurred  in  the  past,  the  second  with  truths, 
aflSrmed  to  be  eternally  valid,  about  God  and  His 
relation  to  the  world.  I  shall  first  take  the  question  of 
historical  fact  —  the  propositions,  let  us  say,  that 
Jesus  Christ  existed  at  such  and  such  a  date,  that  He 
was  born  of  a  virgin,  that  He  did  and  said  such  and 
such  things,  that  He  was  crucified  and  buried,  that 
He  rose  again,  and  that  He  ascended  into  heaven; 
and  on  this  point  I  would  simply  ask  my  readers 
whether  they  really  do  believe  that  facts  of  that  kind 
ought  to  be  accepted  on  any  other  evidence  than  that 
of  history  itself  —  whether  they  believe  that  there  is 
a  short-cut  to  those  particular  pieces  of  information, 
such  as  would  certainly  be  repudiated  in  the  case  of 
any  other  historical  events  ?  If  any  one  replies  in  the 
affirmative,  I  have  on  this  head  no  more  to  say.  But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  agreed  that  the  truth  of 
the  story  of  the  life  and  death  of  Christ  must  stand 
or  fall  by  the  ordinary  criteria  of  evidence,  then  that 
whole  question  is  removed  from  the  sphere  of  reve- 
lation to  that  of  history;  and  religion,  so  far  as  it  is 
conceived  to  depend  upon  the  facts  we  are  consider- 
ing, becomes  dependent  upon  historical  inquiry. 
This  is,  in  fact,  the  position  which,  as  I  cannot  but 
believe,  educated  and  intelligent  men  do  now,  and 
[34] 


REVELATION 

will  more  and  more  in  the  future,  adopt.  But  if  that 
be  so,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  so,  the  result  must  be  a 
profound  modification  of  the  character  of  religious 
beHef. 

For  those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  nature  of 
historical  inquiries,  the  uncertainty  of  testimony,  the 
prejudice  of  witnesses,  the  doubtfulness  of  docu- 
ments, who  have  watched,  in  other  religions  than 
the  Christian,  the  growth  of  myths  and  the  creation 
of  fictitious  personalities,  may  easily  assure  them- 
selves, without  entering  far  into  the  laborious  in- 
quiry, that  its  results  are  bound  to  be  in  the  highest 
degree  tentative  and  uncertain,  that  scholars  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter  will  continue  to  disagree  and  to 
dispute,  and  that,  in  fact,  there  is  not  evidence  suffi- 
cient in  quality  or  in  quantity  to  establish  any 
unquestionable  final  truth.  Now,  in  an  ordinary  his- 
torical inquiry,  this  might  be  a  matter  of  small  mo- 
ment. Men  do  not  much  or  profoundly  care  whether, 
for  example,  Lycurgus  existed  or  no,  what  was  the 
exact  contribution  to  the  constitutional  history  of 
Athens  of  the  reforms  of  Draco  or  of  Solon,  nor 
about  any  of  the  thousand  and  one  similar  points 
which  are  the  subject  of  historical  controversy.  But 
it  is  a  very  different  matter  when  they  are  asked  to 
stake  their  whole  conception  of  life  on  the  dubious 
result  of  inquiries  so  difficult.  And  a  man  who  thinks 
[35] 


RELIGION 

about  the  issue  at  all,  and  is  bent  upon  honesty,  will, 
I  believe,  incline  to  set  aside  the  whole  controversy 
as  irrelevant  to  whatever  is  really  essential  in  religion, 
and  seek  elsewhere  than  in  history  the  basis  on  which 
to  erect  the  fabric  of  his  belief  and  conduct.  He  may, 
indeed,  find  a  religious  inspiration  in  the  recorded 
life  and  sayings  of  Christ.  But  the  inspiration  would 
be  the  same,  whether  he  regarded  the  record  of  the 
Gospels  as  myth  or  as  fact,  and  would  depend,  not 
on  the  existence  of  Christ  in  the  past  or  in  the  pres- 
ent, but  on  the  conception  of  life  embodied  in  His 
story. 

Such,  I  cannot  but  think,  must  be  the  ultimate 
result  on  every  really  religious  and  candid  mind,  of 
an  acceptance  of  the  scientific  criterion  in  connection 
with  the  recorded  life  of  Christ.  It  does  not,  of  course, 
follow  that  many  men  will  not  continue  for  a  long 
time  to  reject  this  conclusion.  For  men  tend  always 
to  believe  what  they  want  to  beUeve,  not  what  they 
are  justified  in  believing;  and  many  people  do  very 
much  want  to  beheve  in  the  factual  truth  of  the  story 
of  Christ,  if  only  because  they  have  made  it  the  foun- 
dation of  their  religious  faith.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
those,  be  they  many  or  few,  who  care  enough  about 
religion  to  care  whether  it  is  true,  know,  or  may 
know,  that  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  the  story  of 
Christ  can  only  be  decided  by  historical  investiga- 
[36] 


REVELATION 

tion;  and,  knowing  that,  those  who  have  the  pro- 
foundest  sense  of  what  reHgion  means  will  prefer,  I 
think,  to  rest  it  on  the  immediate  experience  of  Ufe, 
rather  than  on  the  result  of  inquiries  into  a  remote 
and  uncertain  past. 

The  readers  who  have  gone  with  me  so  far  I  will 
now  ask  to  go  a  step  further.  Supposing  that  we  have 
handed  over  to  science  all  questions  of  historical  fact, 
does  there  remain  some  other  kind  of  truth  which 
may  be  held  to  be  communicable  by  revelation  .'* 
"Yes,"  it  will  be  replied,  "there  remain  what  are 
really  the  most  important  truths  of  religion:  the  ex- 
istence and  nature  of  God  and  His  relation  to  the 
world."  Let  us  proceed,  then,  to  consider  these.  And 
in  the  first  place,  let  us  note  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
in  the  case  of  Christianity,  as  of  the  other  great  his- 
torical religions,  the  truth  in  question  is  intimately 
bound  up  with  that  factual  truth  which  we  have  sug- 
gested must  be  relegated  to  the  court  of  science. 
Christians  believe  that  God  exists,  that  He  has  such 
and  such  a  character,  and  that  He  cares  about  and 
directs  the  world,  primarily  because  they  believe 
that  Jesus  Christ  existed  and  taught  in  the  manner 
recorded.  So  far,  then,  as  the  doctrines  of  Christian 
theology  depend  upon  these  facts,  they  stand  or  fall, 
if  the  position  I  put  forward  be  accepted,  by  the  ver- 
dict of  history.  I  will  suppose,  however,  that  it  is 
[37] 


2085(39 


RELIGION 

urged  that  there  is  a  direct  revelation  of  theological 
truth,  a  revelation  which  may  be  confirmed,  but  can- 
not be  shaken,  by  history,  and  which  is  communi- 
cated somehow  to  some  special  sense,  so  as  not  to  be 
reducible  to  a  department  of  science. 

This  revelation  may  be  supposed  to  be  communi- 
cated either  to  an  individual  mind  or  to  a  Church. 
But  the  revelation  to  a  Church  must,  I  suppose,  be 
conceived  to  rest  originally  upon  revelation  to  indi- 
\aduals.  It  is  the  latter,  therefore,  as  the  more  funda- 
mental, which  I  shall  consider.  And  I  shall  proceed 
straight  to  what  appears  to  be  the  fundamental  ques- 
tion: What  are  the  marks  by  which  a  revelation  is 
recognized,  and  which  lead  a  man  to  separate  off  a 
certain  set  of  his  convictions,  and  say  that  they  were 
arrived  at  by  a  route,  and  represent  a  kind  of  cer- 
tainty, different  from  all  others .'' 

The  answer  to  this  question  ought  clearly  to  be 
given  by  one  who  is  conscious  of  possessing  this  spe- 
cial avenue  to  truth,  not  by  one  who,  like  myself,  is 
aware  that  he  does  not  possess  it.  Judging,  however, 
from  what  has  been  said  on  the  subject  by  those  pro- 
fessing to  have  experience,  and  from  what  appear  to 
be  the  general  possibilities  of  the  case,  I  venture  to 
suggest  that  revelation  can  only  be  conceived  in  one 
of  two  ways:  either  as  an  immediate  intuition  con- 
veyed in  what  is  regarded  as  a  moment  of  supernor- 
[38] 


R  E  V  P:  I>  A  T  I  O  N 

mal  perception;  or  as  the  gradually  garnered  result 
of  the  normal  experience  of  life.  I  shall  consider  each 
of  these  possibilities  in  turn. 

And,  first,  with  regard  to  the  intuition  of  the  ex- 
ceptional moment.  It  is,  of  course,  indisputable  that 
such  experiences  occur,  and  are  conceived  by  those 
who  receive  them  to  be  communications  of  absolute 
truth;  the  familiar  phenomenon  of  "conversion"  is 
a  case  in  point.  But,  for  our  present  purpose,  the  im- 
portant question  is  whether  the  belief  of  the  recipi- 
ent in  the  evidential  value  of  the  experience  is  justi- 
fied; and  I  think  that  a  little  consideration  will  show 
that  it  is  not,  for  it  is  noticeable  that  the  truth  sup- 
posed to  be  revealed  in  the  moment  of  conversion  is 
commonly,  if  not  invariably,  the  reflection  of  the 
doctrine  or  theory  with  which  the  subject,  whether 
or  no  he  has  accepted  it,  has  hitherto  been  most 
familiar.  I  have  never  heard,  for  example,  of  a  case 
in  which  a  Mohammedan  or  a  Hindoo,  Avithout  hav- 
ing ever  heard  of  Christianity,  has  had  a  revelation 
of  Christian  truth ;  or  even  of  a  case  of  the  conversion 
in  this  way  to  Roman  Catholicism  of  one  who  has 
been  brought  up  an  Evangelical,  or  vice  versa.  Con- 
version, in  fact,  it  would  .seem,  is  not  the  communi- 
cation of  a  new  truth;  it  is  the  presentation  of  ideas 
already  familiar  in  such  a  way  that  they  arc  accom- 
panied by  an  irresistible  certainty  that  they  are  true. 
[39] 


L^ 


RELIGION 

But  this  sense  of  certainty  may  attach  to  any  kind  of 
intellectual  content.  If  a  man  has  been  brought  up  a 
Christian,  he  will  be  converted  to  a  belief  in  Christ; 
if  he  has  been  trained  as  a  Hindoo,  he  will  receive 
the  vision  of  the  Absolute ;  if  he  is  optimistic  by  tem- 
perament, he  will  have  a  revelation  that  the  worid 
is  good;  if  pessimistic,  it  will  be  borne  in  upon  him 
that  it  is  bad.  All  of  these  revelations  cannot  be  true. 
One  may  be  true  and  the  others  false.  But  in  that 
case  we  must  find  our  criterion  of  truth  and  false- 
hood somewhere  else  than  in  the  subjective  certainty 
of  the  converted  person.  And  that  this  must  be  so 
will  be  even  more  clear  when  we  reflect  that,  so  far 
as  the  element  of  subjective  certainty  is  concerned,  a 
religious  revelation  cannot  be  distinguished  from 
what  would  be  admitted  to  be  the  hallucinations  of 
disease.  There  is  no  idea  in  a  person's  mind  which 
may  not,  under  the  appropriate  conditions,  become 
an  idee  fixe,  and  substitute  itself,  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  patient,  for  what  is  commonly  taken  to 
be  reality.  A  man  may  be  convinced  with  equal  assur- 
ance that  he  is  a  poached  egg  or  a  saint;  that  he  has 
a  mission  to  assassinate  the  King  or  to  redeem  the 
world ;  that  he  is  eternally  damned  or  eternally  saved ; 
that  he  has  had  a  vision  of  the  Virgin  Mary  or  a 
vision  of  Nirvana.  I  do  not  suggest  that  there  is  no 
distinction  in  truth  and  value  between  the  various 
[40] 


REVELATION 

ideas  that  may  thus  be  imposed  by  moments  of  emo- 
tional excitement  upon  different  minds  —  that  the 
visions,  say,  of  St.  Francis  are  not  more  important 
than  those  of  Marie  Alacoque,  or  the  conversion  of 
St.  Paul  than  that  of  a  dipsomaniac  in  the  Salvation 
Army.  But  it  is  indisputable  that  the  test  of  validity 
must  be  sought  somewhere  else  than  in  the  sense  of 
certainty  felt  by  the  person  who  claims  to  have  had 
the  revelation.  In  other  words,  the  truth  of  a  doc- 
trine supposed  to  be  thus  conveyed,  or  the  goodness 
of  a  moral  intuition,  must  be  sifted,  before  they  can 
be  accepted,  by  the  ordinary  critical  processes;  and, 
except  as  the  result  of  such  a  sifting,  performed  de- 
liberately and  again  and  again,  in  calm  and  normal 
moments,  no  man  who  is  at  once  religious,  honest, 
and  intelligent,  will  or  ought  to  accept  the  deliver- 
ances of  any  so-called  revelation  of  this  type.  But  to 
admit  this  is  to  admit  that  we  reject  revelation  as  a 
basis  of  religion;  if,  that  is,  revelation  be  conceived  as 
the  direct  communication  of  truth  in  a  moment  of 
supernormal,  or,  as  is  just  as  likely  to  be  the  case,  of 
infranormal  experience. 

But  if  revelation  be  not  so  conceived,  how  is  it  to 
be  conceived  ?  Many  people  who  have  experience  of 
religion  would,  I  think,  reply  somewhat  as  follows : 

"  We  received  originally  —  on  authority,  if  you 
like  —  a  certain  doctrine  which  also  commended 
[41] 


RELIGION 

itself  to  our  affections  —  the  doctrine,  in  brief,  which 
we  conceive  to  contain  the  essence  of  Christianity: 
that  there  is  a  God  who  loves  us  as  a  Father  loves  His 
children;  that  Jesus  Christ  is  His  son;  that  He  lived 
upon  earth  and  died  upon  the  cross;  that  His  death 
is  the  assurance  of  our  redemption;  and  that  that 
redemption  is  gradually  working  itself  out  under  His 
immediate  direction  in  the  course  of  the  history  of 
the  world  and  of  individual  lives.  Further,  we  believe 
that  souls  are  immortal,  and  are  destined  —  those 
of  them,  at  least,  who  are  saved  —  to  enter  into  eter- 
nal bliss.  The  doctrines  thus  received  we  have  car- 
ried with  us  through  the  experience  of  life;  and,  if 
once  we  believed  it  on  authority,  we  believe  it  now 
because  we  have  found  that  it  w^orks.  At  moments  of 
trouble  we  have  had  recourse  to  it,  and  have  not 
found  it  to  fail  us.  We  have  proved  it  to  be  progres- 
sively capable  of  interpreting  experience.  And  when 
we  say  that  it  is  'revealed,'  what  we  mean  is  that, 
though  we  could  never  have  arrived  at  it  by  the  un- 
aided operation  of  the  reason,  yet,  once  it  was  given 
us,  we  tested  and  found  it  to  be  true.  We  cannot,  in- 
deed, prove  it  by  the  intelligence,  but  we  have  proved 
it  by  life;  and,  though  its  source  be  super-rational, 
in  its  operation  it  has  shown  itself  to  be  reasonable." 
I  do  not  know  whether,  in  this  brief  statement,  I 
iave  done  justice  to  the  position  of  those  whom  I 
[42] 


REVELATION 

respect  as  at  once  the  most  religious  and  most  ra- 
tional of  Christians.  But  I  have  endeavored  to  do  so; 
and  I  must  now  indicate  what  I  conceive  to  be  the 
intellectual  weakness  of  the  position,  without  ques- 
tioning its  efficacy  as  a  rule  of  life. 

And,  first,  I  must  point  out  that  the  view  I  have 
indicated  depends,  in  part  at  least,  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  story  of  the  Gospel  is  true.  But  that,  I 
have  urged,  is  a  matter  that  can  be  determined  only 
by  historical  criticism,  and  about  which  it  is  hardly 
to  be  expected  that  such  criticism  will  ever  attain  to 
certainty.  No  experience  of  life  can  affect  the  conclu- 
sion one  way  or  the  other.  Either  Christ  existed,  and 
was  as  described,  or  He  did  not.  And  the  truth  on 
this  subject  cannot  be  modified  by  the  fact  that  it  is 
possible  to  weave  about  His  recorded  history  an  emi- 
nently consolatory  and  helpful  scheme  of  life.  Fur- 
ther, with  regard  to  the  other  elements  of  the  doc- 
trine —  the  existence  and  nature  of  God  and  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  —  these,  though  in  the  Chris- 
tian scheme  they  are  closely  connected  with  the  belief 
in  Christ,  are  no  doubt  capable  of  being  held  inde- 
pendently. But,  even  so,  in  what  sense  can  they  be 
said  to  be  "  revealed  'i "  The  fact  that  they  afford  a 
solution  of  the  riddle  of  the  world  which  to  many 
minds  is  satisfactory  does  not  in  itself  show  anything 
about  their  truth  or  falsehood.  It  shows  merely  the 
[43] 


RELIGION 

tremendous  bias  under  which  criticism  has  to  act. 
The  behef  in  what  is  called  revelation  is,  I  fear,  in 
such  an  instance  as  this,  only  a  reflection  of  the  in- 
tense need  to  believe.  But  such  need  can  be  no  guar- 
antee of  truth,  though  it  may  be  the  most  fruitful  im- 
pulse in  the  search  for  truth.  Here,  too,  the  fact  that 
the  belief  works  is  no  evidence  of  its  validity,  but 
only  of  its  efficacy.  Its  validity  can  only  be  tested  by 
the  ordinary  processes  of  criticism.  And  this  is  a  fact 
which  it  will,  I  cannot  but  think,  become  increasingly 
impossible  for  the  most  religious  and  the  most  can- 
did minds  to  deny.  There  is  no  general  presumption 
that  what  is  helpful  and  good  is  also  true.  We  may 
desire,  and  rightly,  that  it  should  be  so;  and  that  de- 
sire may  be,  as  I  believe  it  is,  the  main  stimulus  in 
our  search  for  truth.  But  it  cannot  be  more;  and  it  is, 
I  feel  sure,  to  the  interest  of  religion,  as  well  as  of 
science,  that  this  should  be  recognized  as  soon  and  as 
widely  as  possible. 

This  must  conclude  what  I  had  to  say  on  the  sub- 
ject of  revelation.  Revelation,  I  have  suggested,  in 
proportion  as  men  become  honest,  educated,  and 
intelligent,  will  cease  to  be  regarded  as  a  satisfac- 
tory basis  for  religion ;  for  it  will  be  increasingly  rec- 
ognized not  to  be  an  avenue  to  truth.  And  if,  so  far,  I 
have  carried  my  readers  with  me,  I  will  ask  them  to 
proceed  with  me  to  the  further  question:  Granting 
[44] 


REVELATION 

that  revelation  must  be  set  aside,  does  religion  dis- 
appear with  it  ?  Or  does  the  ordinary  experience  of 
life  evoke  and  justify  some  point  of  view  which  may 
properly  be  called  religious  ? 

In  attempting  an  answer  to  this  question,  it  will 
be  useful,  I  think,  to  call  attention  to  a  feature  which 
is  common  to  all  the  great  religions,  and  which  dif- 
ferentiates them,  on  the  one  hand,  from  mere  philo- 
sophical theories  of  the  universe,  and,  on  the  other, 
from  mere  ethical  systems.  The  point  I  have  in  mind 
is  that  they  combine  in  a  close  and  indissoluble  union 
two  things  which  logically  are  quite  distinct  —  name- 
ly, first,  propositions  about  the  nature  of  the  world 
and  man's  relation  to  it;  secondly,  statements  of 
values,  of  objects  which  ought  to  be  pursued,  and 
ought  to  give  rise,  perhaps  do  give  rise,  to  passion- 
ate aspiration.  Thus,  on  the  one  hand,  in  providing 
a  system  of  the  universe,  they  bring  it  into  close  con- 
nection with  life  by  associating  it  with  ideals;  and, 
on  the  other,  in  recommending  ideals,  they  im- 
mensely enhance  their  attractive  force  by  postulat- 
ing that  they  can  and  will  be  realized  in  actual  exist- 
ence. But  the  elements  which  are  thus  closely 
associated  in  religion  are,  as  I  have  said,  logically 
distinct.  A  sound  and  true  perception  in  the  region  of 
ideals  may  be  accompanied  by  ignorance  and  miscon- 
ception in  the  region  of  fact,  and  vice  versa.  And  this, 
[45] 


RELIGION 

I  think,  is  what  has  happened  in  the  case  of  the  great 
reHgions.  Take,  for  instance,  Christianity.  It  is  com- 
monly, and,  1  think,  rightly,  credited  with  embody- 
ing moral  values  of  profound  and  singular  import- 
ance, such,  for  example,  as  the  brotherhood  of  man ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  intellectually,  its  whole  sys- 
tem of  fact,  its  cosmology  and  theology,  is,  to  say  the 
least,  inadequate.  The  story  of  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
of  the  apple  and  the  serpent,  of  the  Fall,  of  the  pen- 
alty incurred,  not  by  Adam  and  Eve  merely,  but  by 
the  whole  human  race,  of  the  Atonement  by  a  vicari- 
ous sacrifice,  of  the  two  societies,  the  World  and  the 
Church,  pursuing  through  history,  side  by  side, 
their  diverse  destiny,  the  one  to  eternal  damnation, 
the  other  to  eternal  blessedness  —  all  this  is  mere 
mythology,  and  mj-thology  not  of  the  most  edifpng 
kind.  But  originally,  it  must  always  be  remembered, 
this  mythology  was  seriously  put  forw'ard,  not  as  a 
metaphor  or  symbol,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact,  by  the 
man  who,  more  than  any  one  else,  laid  the  foundation 
of  Christian  theology.  It  was  accepted  as  matter  of 
fact  by  the  Church.  And  if  now,  as  I  suppose  is  very 
largely  the  case,  it  is  interpreted  as  mere  allegory, 
that  ver}'  fact  only  illustrates  the  point  I  wish  to 
make,  that  a  religion  which  embodies  profound 
moral  intuitions  may  associate  them  with  views  about 
the  universe  so  inadequate  and  crude  that  subse- 
[46] 


REVELATION 

quent  generations  have  no  choice  but  to  interpret 
them  as  symbolism.  There  is  thus  an  inherent  insta- 
bility in  the  great  religions,  due  to  the  fact  that  their 
prophets,  commonly  men  of  unique  moral  insight, 
have  associated  their  moral  teaching  with  theories 
about  the  world  based  upon  no  proper  method  of 
inquiry,  and  unable  to  meet  the  first  brunt  of  intelli- 
gent criticism. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  conclusion  at  which  I 
am  driving.  If  the  whole  development  of  the  human 
mind  in  the  last  few  centuries  is  not  to  be  reversed, 
if  we  are  not  to  relapse  into  intellectual  barbarism,  it 
will  become  increasingly  impossible  for  any  theory 
about  the  constitution  of  the  world  and  the  meaning 
of  human  destiny  to  be  accepted,  wliich  does  not 
rest  explicitly  upon  the  basis  of  science  and  philoso- 
phy, and  is  not  amenable  to,  and  competent  to  sus- 
tain, their  criticism.  In  other  words,  it  is  not,  and 
cannot  be,  the  function  of  religion  to  proclaim  truths 
about  the  general  structure  of  the  universe,  or  to 
affirm  that  this  or  that  Being  does  or  does  not  exist. 
And  the  frank  recognition  of  this  fact  implies  that, 
whatever  religion  may  be  in  the  future,  it  will  be, 
unless  all  the  intellectual  heritage  of  the  world  is  to 
be  lost,  something  very  different  from  what  it  has 
been  in  the  past. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  other  aspect  of  religion, 
[47] 


RELIGION 

that  whereby  it  embodies  statements  of  moral  values. 
These  are  not  necessarily  affected  by  the  truth  or 
falsehood  of  the  cosmological  ideas  with  which  they 
have  been  associated.  And,  in  the  future,  as  in  the 
past,  there  will  be,  one  may  anticipate  and  hope, 
men  of  profound  intuition  in  these  matters,  who  will 
deliver  their  message  to  the  world.  The  main  differ- 
ence that  may  be  anticipated  in  the  attitude  of  men 
towards  the  teacher  will  be  that  they  will  no  longer 
regard  him  as  a  person  radically  different  from  them- 
selves, as  a  God  or  the  Son  of  God,  nor  conceive  his 
message  to  have  a  final,  exhaustive,  and  infallible 
significance;  but,  rather,  will  recognize  him  to  be  a 
man  like  themselves,  only  more  finely  endowed,  and 
will  know  that  it  is  their  duty,  as  it  will  be  the  duty 
of  those  who  succeed  them,  not  merely  passively  to 
accept,  but  to  appropriate,  to  sift,  and  to  test,  the 
gospel  he  announces.  They  will  regard  him,  in  brief, 
as  a  poet,  a  saint,  a  practical  reformer,  and  value 
and  follow  him  accordingly,  up  to  the  measure  of  his 
merits  and  of  their  lights. 

Now,  granting  all  this,  as  I  believe  it  will  be  grant- 
ed by  the  readers  whom  I  have  in  view,  will  there  or 
will  there  not,  under  these  conditions,  be  any  place 
left  for  anything  that  ought  properly  to  be  called  re- 
ligion ?  I  believe  that  there  will,  and  a  very  impor- 
tant one.  There  will  still  be  an  interaction,  though 
[48] 


REVELATION 


no  longer  a  fusion,  between  our  conception  of  the 
world  and  our  ideals.  The  former,  indeed,  we  shall 
then  take,  probably  in  a  very  tentative  form,  from 
science  and  philosophy ;  the  latter  we  shall  hold  more 
loosely,  less  dogmatically,  though  not,  therefore,  with 
less  conviction  than  before.  But,  in  some  form  or 
other,  we  shall  have  both ;  and  religion  will  consist 
in  the  passionate  apprehension,  not  merely  by  the 
intellect  but  by  the  imagination,  of  the  nature,  as  we 
conceive  it,  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  and  of  our  place 
in  it,  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  ideals. 
But  the  further  elaboration  of  this  position  I  must 
leave  to  the  next  chapter. 


[49] 


CHAPTER  III 

RELIGION 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  gave  reasons  that  seem 
to  me  to  necessitate  the  rejection  of  revelation,  in  any 
sense  of  the  term  which  I  have  been  able  to  imagine, 
as  an  avenue  to  truth,  and  therefore  as  a  basis  for 
religion.  I  suggested,  however,  that  religion  would 
remain,  even  if  we  rejected  revelation,  and  even,  as  I 
am  now  inclined  to  add,  all  the  more  because  we 
have  rejected  it.  For  religion,  in  the  view  of  it  which 
I  now  wish  to  develop,  is  a  reaction  of  the  highest 
imagination  of  the  best  men  upon  life  and  the  world, 
so  far  as  we  know  them  by  experience  and  science  — 
a  passionate  apprehension,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
ideals,  of  the  general  situation  in  which  we  find  our- 
selves. 

That  situation,  in  essentials,  has  not  been  changed 
by  all  the  developments  of  history;  and  I  will  venture 
briefly  to  describe  it  as  follows.  We  find  ourselves 
born  without  choice  of  our  own  into  a  universe  which 
we  do  not  understand,  and  which  corresponds,  as  it 
[50] 


RELIGION 

seems,  only  in  the  most  imperfect  and  fragmentary 
way  with  those  of  our  desires  and  aspirations  which 
we  increasingly  believe  to  be  legitimate  and  good. 
From  this  universe  we  are  removed,  as  we  entered  it, 
without  notice  or  warning,  and  without  any  refer- 
ence to  our  willingness  or  unwillingness  to  depart  — 

"  Without  asking,  hither  hurried  whence  f 
And,  ivithout  asking,  whither  hurried  hence?" 

Before  departing,  we  have,  commonly  and  without 
much  reflection,  produced  others  to  undergo  in  their 
turn  the  same  enigmatic  destiny.  And  so  from  gener- 
ation to  generation  the  race  is  continued,  achieving 
much,  yet  accomplishing  nothing;  learning  much, 
yet  remaining  ignorant  of  everything;  acting,  tliink- 
ing,  feeling,  yet  haunted  by  the  doubt  whether  it  is 
not  all  a  dream ;  pursuing  Good  and  contending  with 
Evil  in  a  scheme  of  things  which  never  appears  itself 
to  take  sides;  developing  the  means  to  happiness,  yet 
never  becoming  happier;  pressing  ever  onward  to 
goals  that  are  never  reached;  and  retiring,  section 
after  section,  bafiled  but  never  acknowledging  de- 
feat, to  make  room  for  new  combatants  in  the  con- 
test that  is  always  old. 

Such,  or  .somewhat  such,  is  the  situation.  And  it  is 
in  an  attitude  of  the  spirit  towards  this  situation  that 
the  essence  of  religion,  I  would  suggest,  consists; 
[51] 


RELIGION 

not  in  opinions  held  about  it,  not  in  the  intellectual 
content  of  beliefs  —  these  may  be  of  almost  any 
character  without  thereby  becoming  or  ceasing  to  be 
religious  —  but  in  the  imaginative  perception  and 
feeling  of  the  issue,  however  it  be  interpreted.  It  is 
not,  in  a  word,  the  doctrine  that  makes  religion,  it 
is  the  spirit;  and  the  spirit  may  inspire  the  most 
diverse  and  contradictory  doctrines.  This  is  expres- 
sed for  the  modern  world  better  than  I  have  found 
it  expressed  elsewhere,  in  the  following  passage  of 
Maeterlinck : 

"  Je  puis  croire  d'une  maiiieresi  religieuse  et^infinie  qu'il  n'y  a 
pas  de  Dieu,  que  mon  apparition  n'a  pas  de  buth  ors  d'elle-m  me, 
que  I'existence  de  mon  ame  n'est  plus  necessaire  a  I'economie  de  ce 
monde  sans  limites  que  les  nuances  ephemeres  d'une  fleur;  vous 
pouvez  croire  petitement  q'un  Dieu  unique  et  tout-puissant  vous 
aime  et  vous  protege;  je  serai  plus  heureux  et  plus  calme  que  vous, 
si  mon  incertitude  est  plus  grande,  plus  grave  et  plus  noble  que 
votre  foi,  si  elle  a  interroge  plus  intimement  mon  ame,  si  elle  a  fait 
le  tour  d'un  horizon  plus  etendu,  si  elle  a  aime  plus  de  choses.  Le 
Dieu  auquel  je  ne  crois  pas  deviendra  plus  puissant  et  plus  conso- 
lateur  que  celui  auquel  vous  croyez,  si  j'ai  merite  que  mon  doute 
repose  sur  des  pensees  et  sur  des  sentiments  plus  vastes  et  plus 
purs  que  ceux  qui  animent  votre  certitude.  Encore  une  fois,  croire, 
ne  pas  croire,  cela  n'a  guere  d'importance;  ce  qui  en  a,  c'est  la 
loyaute,  I'etendue,  le  d^sinteressement  et  la  pofondeur  des  raisons 
pour  lesquelles  on  croit  ou  pour  lesquelles  on  ne  croit  point." 

Is  truth,  then,  indifferent  ?  Not  at  all !  But  —  and 
this  is  what  we  must  learn  to  accept  —  religion  can- 
not teach  us  what  is  true.  Only  perception,  and  infer- 

[52] 


RELIGION 

ence,  and  logic,  only,  in  the  broadest  sense,  science 
—  under  which,  for  the  moment,  I  will  asked  to  be 
allowed  to  include  philosophy  —  can  teach  us 
anything  about  the  constitution  of  the  universe  and 
our  own  place  in  it;  can  teach  us  whether  or  no  there 
be  anything  corresponding  with  what  we  have  called 
God;  whether  or  no  the  individual  soul  survives 
death;  whether  or  no  the  process  of  things  moves 
towards  a  good  end.  These  are,  to  my  mind,  ques- 
tions of  supreme  importance.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
the  existence  or  the  value  of  religion  depends  upon 
the  answer  we  may  be  able  to  give  them,  although 
its  character  must  be  determined  by  that  answer. 

Let  me  illustrate  my  meaning  by  examples.  Sup- 
pose a  man  to  have  accepted  —  as  many  now  have, 
provisionally  at  least  —  the  view  which  seems  to  be 
suggested  by  modern  science:  that  the  world  as  a 
whole  is  neither  good  nor  bad,  but  simply  indifferent 
to  moral  values;  that  the  life  of  mankind  is  but  a 
brief  and  insignificant  episode  in  its  strictly  deter- 
mined but  purposeless  activity;  that  it  tends  to  no 
goal  having  ethical  significance,  still  less  to  one  cor- 
responding to  our  conceptions  of  Good  —  suppose 
man  to  have  accepted  this,  is  he  therefore  debarred 
from  religion  ?  Surely  not.  On  the  contrary,  there 
would  seem  to  be  open  to  him  two  attitudes  at  least, 
either  of  which  he  will  adopt,  according  to  his  char- 
[53] 


RELIGION 

acter,  if  he  has  the  religious  instinct  at  all,  and  either 
of  which  may  be  fairly  called  religious.  Thus  he  may, 
adhering  passionately  to  our  standards  of  value  (none 
the  less  true  because  their  realization  is  so  imperfect 
and  precarious),  pursue,  wherever  it  flees,  the  per- 
ishing image  of  Good,  imprisoning  it  in  a  rule  or  a 
policy,  impressing  it  on  a  fugitive  act,  embalming 
it  in  the  flux  of  feeling,  reflecting  it  in  the  mirror  of 
art,  always  from  the  consciousness  of  frustration 
drawing  new  \ngor  for  the  chase,  snatching  defiance 
from  the  sense  of  defeat,  patience  from  the  fire  of 
passion,  from  the  very  indifference  of  the  universe 
gathering  the  inspiration  to  contend  with  it,  and, 
though  at  last  he  be  broken,  perishing  unsubdued, 
weaker  yet  greater  than  the  blind  world  which, 
though  it  made  him  and  destroyed,  was  incapable  of 
understanding  or  valuing  its  own  creation.  Such  a 
man,  sustained  by  such  a  conviction,  honestly  held, 
I  should  call  religious.  And  if  to  some  he  should  ap- 
pear rather  to  be  blasphemous,  that  will  be  only 
because  they  do  not  share  what  I  have  supposed  to 
be  his  intellectual  position.  Granting  a  bad  or  indif- 
ferent world,  to  defy  it  would  be  a  form  of  religion. 
But  not  the  only  possible  form,  even  on  that  hypothe- 
sis. For  where  one  man  practises  defiance,  another 
may  practise  renunciation;  and  the  conviction  that 
Good  cannot  be  realized,  or  can  be  realized,  if  at  all, 
[54] 


RELIGION 

only  in  connection  with  greater  Evil,  may  lead  to  the 
creed  of  the  annihilation  of  desire,  instead  of  the 
affirmation  of  will.  Escape,  not  battle,  then  becomes 
the  goal,  as  in  the  Buddhist  faith,  and  the  philosophy 
of  Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann.  And  this  attitude, 
too,  will  be  religious,  if  it  be  greatly  and  imagina- 
tively conceived  —  religious,  not  by  virtue  of  its  in- 
tellectual content,  but  by  virtue  of  the  sense  of  a 
world-issue  turning  upon  the  ideas  of  Good  and 
Evil. 

But,  now,  suppose  a  radically  different  scientific 
conception  of  the  world.  Suppose  it  to  be  believed 
that  our  ideas  of  Good  and  Evil  are  also  those  with 
which  the  universe  is  concerned;  that  it  is  moving 
towards  a  goal,  and  a  goal  of  which  we  approve; 
that  with  it  moves  the  human  race,  and  even  indi- 
vidual souls,  surviving  death,  and  ultimately  enter- 
ing into  their  perfection.  On  this  view  religion 
assumes  a  radically  different  complexion.  It  is  opti- 
mistic instead  of  pessimistic;  it  has  exchanged  the 
horror  of  night  for  the  midday  sun.  But  it  is  still  relig- 
ion, for  its  essence  is  still  the  same  —  an  imaginative 
conception  of  the  universe  as  a  whole  in  relation  to 
Good  and  Evil. 

Or,  again,  suppose  that,  to  another  man,  science 
does  not  appear  to  justify  any  attitude  towards  the 
universe  as  a  whole  except  that  of  agnosticism;  sup- 
[55] 


RELIGION 

pose  he  feels  that  he  does  not  know,  that  no  one  really 
knows,  what  is  the  relation  of  our  ideals  to  the  world ; 
whether  or  no  they  are  destined  for  any  complete  and 
permanent  realization;  whether  or  no  there  is  any 
significance  in  individual  lives  other  than  that  which 
appears  on  the  surface.  Still,  if  his  imagination  and 
his  feeling  be  profound,  he  is  not  debarred  from  re- 
ligion —  a  religion  not  of  sunshine  or  darkness,  but 
of  the  starr}'  twilight,  tremulous  with  hopes  and  fears, 
wistful,  adventurous,  passionate,  divining  a  horizon 
more  mysterious  and  vast  than  day  or  night  can  sug- 
gest, from  uncertainty  conjuring  possibility,  from 
doubt  evoking  inspiration,  and  passing  through  life 
as  a  man  may  float  down  an  unknown  river  in  the 
dusk,  risking  and  content  to  risk  his  fortune  and  his 
life  on  the  chance  of  a  discovery  more  wonderful 
even  than  the  most  audacious  of  his  dreams. 

Enough,  perhaps,  has  been  said  to  bring  out  the 
point  I  wdsh  to  make,  one,  as  I  believe,  of  the  very 
first  importance  to  all  who  care  at  once  for  religion 
and  for  truth.  Truth  is  matter  of  science,  religion  of 
imagination  and  feeling.  It  is  possible  to  have  truth 
without  having  religion,  and  vice  versa.  But  if  a  man 
have  religion,  its  character,  if  he  be  intelligent  and 
sincere,  will  necessarily  depend  on  what  he  beheves 
to  be  truth.  He  will  not  imagine  that  religion  implies 
some  special  organ  of  knowledge,  whether  such  or- 
[56] 


RELIGION 

gan  be  supposed  to  be  the  possession  of  all  men  as 
such,  or  of  specially  gifted  individuals,  or  of  a  par- 
ticular Church.  He  will  never  confuse  his  desires 
and  his  aspirations  with  his  positive  knowledge,  even 
though  he  may  think  them  more  important  than  his 
knowledge.  And  he  will  be  the  less  inclined  to  do 
this  in  proportion  as  he  has  come  to  see  that,  what- 
ever be  the  truth,  there  must  always  be  a  place  for 
religion,  and  a  place  perhaps  the  most  important  of 
all.  But  it  is  a  poor  religion  that  needs  to  rest  upon 
falsehood  or  upon  the  deliberate  refusal  to  face  what 
we  know  of  truth ;  that  takes  refuge  in  excitement,  or 
in  sophistry,  or  in  deliberately  induced  subjective 
hallucinations,  from  a  truth  which  it  fears  may  be 
fatal  to  itself.  Religion  is  an  attitude  of  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  will,  not  of  the  intellect.  But  from  the 
intellect  it  receives  its  light;  and  its  discipline  will  be 
the  more  arduous,  its  insight  the  more  profound,  the 
more  candidly  it  accepts  all  that  the  intellect  can 
communicate.  It  is  possible,  it  is  common,  to  believe 
in  God,  without  having  religion;  it  is  less  common, 
but  it  is  not  less  possible,  to  have  religion  without 
believing  in  God. 

Such,  then,  stated  briefly,  is  what  I  conceive  to 
be  the  real  relation  of  religion  to  truth.  I  do  not  know 
that  I  could  better  explain  my  view  by  further  elabo- 
ration ;  and  I  will  therefore  proceed  to  another  point, 
[57] 


RELIGION 

perhaps  not  less  important.  I  will  endeavor  to  set 
forth  the  relation  of  religion,  in  my  sense  of  the  term 
to  the  other  ideal  activities  of  man  —  to  morals,  that 
is,  and  to  art.  And,  first,  with  regard  to  morals.  The 
statement  that  conduct  depends  upon  religion  is  very 
often  made,  and  there  may  be,  in  some  sense,  some 
truth  in  it;  but  in  what  sense,  and  what  truth,  is  not 
so  easy  to  determine.  I  will,  however,  endeavor  to 
make  certain  distinctions  which  I  think  are  impor- 
tant. A  great  part  of  conduct  —  the  whole  conduct 
perhaps,  of  most  people  —  is  purely  habitual.  It  ap- 
pears to  depend  neither  on  religion,  nor  on  any  con- 
scious conviction,  either  of  the  intellect  or  of  the 
imagination.  ]\Ien  act  as  they  do,  in  this  the  more 
common  case,  because  they  cannot  help  it,  because 
they  have  always  done  so,  because  others  about  them 
do  so.  Economic  necessities,  imitation,  public  opin- 
ion —  which  itself  is  the  result  of  these  factors  — 
are  the  determining  considerations.  It  is,  however, 
sometimes  maintained  that  habitual  action  of  this 
type  depends  also  upon  another  element ;  that  really, 
though  indirectly,  it  is  determined  by  rehgion;  for 
that  the  fact  of  a  Church  in  the  background,  with  its 
organization,  its  ser\'ices,  its  sacraments,  acts,  if  in  no 
other  way,  yet  as  a  kind  of  screen,  shutting  out  from 
the  horizon  of  practicability  all  sorts  of  anarchic  and 
anti-social  conduct  which  otherwise  would  naturally 
[58] 


RELIGION 


suggest  itself  to  the  imagination,  and  might  then  nat- 
urally issue  in  action.  This  is  a  contention  which  I 
have  already  discussed  in  dealing  with  what  I  have 
called  ecclesiasticism.  It  is  very  hard,  I  think,  to  say 
whether  there  is  any,  or  how  much,  truth  in  it.  But 
if  there  be  any,  then,  so  far,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
even  habitual  and  mechanical  conduct  depends,  in 
the  last  resort,  not,  indeed,  on  personal  religious  con- 
viction, but  on  the  existence,  in  the  society,  if  not  of 
rehgion,  at  least  of  religious  organization.  Supposing, 
however,  that  such  organization  is  developed  on  the 
lines  of  ecclesiasticism,  I  have  given  my  reasons  for 
belie\ang  that  the  harm  it  does  outweighs  the  possi- 
ble good.  The  proper  way  to  make  and  keep  men 
moral  is  to  help  them  to  conditions  of  life  in  which 
morality  would  be  possible,  and  in  which  it  would 
be  backed  and  supported  by  intelhgence.  Good  con- 
duct based  on  mere  habit  supported  by  the  author- 
ity of  a  Church  is  at  the  best  a  pis  aller;  and  the 
necessity  which  may  be  held  to  justify  it  is  one  which 
also  condemns  the  society  that  cannot  exist  without 
recourse  to  it. 

But,  further,  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  conduct 
which  may  be  said  to  be  based  upon  reason;  by 
which  I  mean  that  it  may  depend,  in  part  at  least, 
upon  the  deliberate  and  conscious  acceptance  of  a 
certain  end  —  such,  for  example,  as  the  greatest 
[59] 


RELIGION 

happiness  of  the  greatest  number;  and  upon  the 
attempt  to  act  in  such  a  way  as  will  tend  to  bring 
about  that  end.  Even  in  such  cases  the  conduct,  I 
think,  is  really  far  more  habitual  than  would  be  ad- 
mitted by  those  who  adopt  the  position.  They  act, 
in  fact,  much  as  other  people  act;  but  they  believe 
that  the  rules  to  which  they  are  accustomed,  and  to 
which  they  instinctively  conform,  are  such  as  will 
contribute,  if  duly  observed,  to  the  goal  they  have  in 
view.  And,  no  doubt,  in  the  case  supposed,  they  are, 
partly  at  least,  right ;  for  customary  action  has  grown 
up  under  the  stress  of  felt,  if  not  formulated,  pur- 
poses, of  which  one  at  least  has  been  the  survival 
and  the  welfare  of  society.  Conduct  of  this  kind  I 
should  describe  as  rational;  but  it  does  not  neces- 
sarily imply  religious  conviction.  A  man  pursuing  it 
need  not  have  any  passion  for  the  good  end  he  has 
set  before  liimself;  he  may  have  merely  an  intellec- 
tual conviction  that  it  is  good;  as,  indeed,  I  think  is 
commonly  the  case  with  those  who  profess  utilitar- 
ianism. Still  less  need  he  have  any  imaginative 
conception  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  and  of  the 
relation  to  it  of  our  ideals.  In  such  cases,  conduct,  I 
think,  clearly  does  not  depend  in  any  sense  upon 
religion;  and,  for  aught  I  know,  in  some  society  of 
the  future  conduct  of  this  kind  may  be  the  general 
rule. 

[60] 


RELIGION 

I  hardly,  however,  think  that  this  is  probable. 
The  religious  instinct  is,  I  believe,  too  deeply  rooted 
ever  to  disappear;  and  wherever  and  whenever  it 
subsists  as  a  genuine  impulse,  in  individuals  or  in 
societies,  it  cannot  help  reacting  profoundly  upon 
morals.  Indeed,  if  we  look  historically  at  the  devel- 
ment  of  conduct,  we  find  that  the  great  moral  re- 
formers have  been  men  of  religious  genius;  that 
Buddha,  Jesus  Christ,  Saint  Francis,  were,  first, 
rehgious  teachers,  and,  secondly,  only^  teachers  of 
morals.  Indeed,  a  profound  ethical  intuition  would 
seem  necessarily  to  depend  on  a  profound  religious 
insight.  For  the  best  man  is  he  who  loves  good  for  its 
own  sake,  and  pursues  it  in  a  reasonable  way.  But  to 
pursue  it  reasonably  is  to  pursue  it  with  an  intelli- 
gence of  its  place  in  the  universe,  and  not  merely  an 
intelligence,  but  a  passionate  apprehension.  So  that 
moral  genius  depends  upon  religious  genius,  and 
therefore,  since  it  must  be  affected  by  anything  that 
affects  religion,  will  be  affected  by  the  deliverances  of 
science  about  the  world. 

From  this  analysis,  imperfect  as  it  is,  it  would  seem 
to  follow  that,  though  it  be  true  that  the  great  mass 
of  conduct  is  based  rather  upon  habits  than  upon 
conviction,  yet  even  these  habits  grew  up  in  connec- 
tion with  religion,  and  perhaps  cannot  subsist  indefi- 
nitely without  a  new  religious  baptism;  and  that  the 
[61] 


RELIGION 

great  reformations  in  morals  have  been  originated  by 
men  of  religious  genius,  upon  the  stream  of  which 
they  have,  as  it  were,  been  floated.  Afterwards,  no 
doubt,  they  are  left  high  and  dry,  like  sea-weed  on 
the  rocks;  but,  then,  like  it,  they  are  deprived  of  their 
proper  element.  Only  the  flooding  of  the  tide  can 
restore  them  to  their  true  and  native  life,  lift  and  ex- 
pand and  set  them  to  sparkle  and  gleam  with  a  thous- 
and colors,  or,  it  may  be,  sweep  them  away  and 
plant  new  seeds,  to  produce  in  their  time  a  new  and 
radiant  foliage.  We  can  and  we  do,  most  of  us,  for 
the  most  part,  act  without  religion ;  but  such  action  is 
the  action  of  machines.  Rehgion  is  the  spirit  and  the 
Ufe;  and  in  that  sense,  a  very  profound  one,  rehgion 
may  be  said  to  be  the  basis  of  conduct. 

Thus,  briefly,  of  the  relation  of  religion  to  conduct; 
I  turn  now  to  consider  its  relation  to  art.  And  here  I 
may  be  met,  at  the  outset,  by  the  contention  that 
there  is  no  such  relation  at  all.  For  artists,  or  at  least 
modern  artists,  are  urgent  in  their  repudiation  of  the 
dependence  of  their  art  upon  an}i:hing  but  itself;  and 
I  presume  that,  so  far  as  their  own  inspiration  is  con- 
cerned, they  are  right.  Art  is  now  very  largely  a  not 
too  sincere  hobby  of  the  rich,  a  matter  of  drawdng- 
room  decoration,  of  fashion,  of  conversation  over  tea, 
or,  what  is  really  most  important,  of  pecuniary  spec- 
ulation. In  the  best  cases,  where  the  artist  at  least  is 
[62] 


RELIGION 

genuine,  it  is  a  creation  of  beautiful  things  for  the 
love  of  beauty,  without  reference  to  any  view  of  life 
as  a  whole,  or  any  place  to  be  filled  by  its  products  in 
the  corporate  activities  of  society.  And  it  is  thus,  per- 
haps, that  artists  at  all  times  have  most  commonly 
regarded  their  art.  But  there  have  been  exceptions. 
There  have  been,  it  seems,  men  who  have  been  pro- 
foundly inspired  by  the  view  of  art  first  formulated, 
so  far  as  I  know,  by  Aristotle :  that  beauty  is  the  end 
set  before  herself  by  Nature,  an  end  which  she  real- 
izes so  far  as  the  limitations  of  matter  permit,  but 
which  it  is  reserved  for  the  artist  to  bring  to  full  per- 
fection, his  work  being  thus  the  fulfilment  of  her 
ideal.  And  if  in  this  view  Nature  be  conceived  as 
herself  the  minister  of  God,  art  will  become  a  relig- 
ious activity  —  as  indicated,  for  example,  in  the  fol- 
lowing lines  of  Michael  Angelo: 

"So,  all  the  lovely  things  we  find  on  earth 
Resemble,  for  the  send  that  rightly  sees. 
That  Source  of  bliss  divine  which  gave  us  birth: 
Nor  have  we  first  fruits  or  remembrances 
Of  heaven  elsewhere."  * 

I  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  refer,  in  passing, 
to  this  conception  of  art;  but  I  do  not  wish  to  lay  un- 
due stress  upon  it.  It  is,  perhaps,  exceptional  for  an 
artist  to  pursue  art  in  a  religious  spirit.  What,  how- 

*  Sonnet  54  in  Symonds'  translation. 
[63] 


RELIGION 

ever,  is  true  and  important  is  that,  in  the  two  greatest 
periods  of  European  art,  the  Greek  and  the  ItaUan, 
art  was  used  and  inspired  by  rehgion.  And  it  would, 
I  think,  be  unhistorical  to  deny  that  the  perfection  it 
attained  in  those  periods  was  connected  with  the 
definite  purpose,  the  hmitations,  the  unity  of  aim, 
imposed  by  the  end  to  which  it  was  made  subservient. 
However  that  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that, 
for  the  votary  who  is  sensitive  both  to  rehgion  and 
art,  both  gain  indefinitely  by  their  association  with 
one  another.  For  him,  without  art  religion  is  dumb; 
and  without  religion  art,  if  it  is  not  insignificant, 
lacks  at  least  the  highest  significance  of  which  it  is 
capable. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  in  illustration  of  this  point, 
to  remind  the  reader  of  the  various  ways  in  which 
art  has  been  made,  and  perhaps  might  be  made 
again,  contributory  to  religion.  First,  as  architecture, 
it  has  raised  the  material  habitation  of  the  Divine, 
and  in  doing  so  has  reflected,  I  think,  by  a  perhaps 
unconscious  symbolism,  the  forms  in  which  that 
Divine  has  been  conceived.  Surely,  at  least,  one 
might  question  whether  the  difference  between  a 
classical  temple  and  a  Gothic  church  is  to  be  attri- 
buted only  to  a  difference  of  climate,  or  of  technical 
skill  and  tradition.  It  would  be  a  curiously  happy 
chance,  if  it  were  merely  chance,  that  made  the  house 
[64] 


RELIGION 

destined  for  the  abode  of  one  of  the  bright  Olympians 
a  palace  of  gleaming  marble  set  on  a  hill  by  the  sea, 
perfect  in  form,  brilliant  in  color,  a  jewel  to  reflect 
the  sun  and  the  sky,  a  harp  for  the  winds  to  play 
upon,  an  incarnation  of  the  spirit  of  the  open  air,  of 
the  daylight  and  of  the  blue  heaven;  while,  for  the 
mysterious  Jehovah  and  the  God  Man  His  Son,  there 
rose  into  gray  and  weeping  skies  huge  emblems  of 
the  cross,  crowned  with  towers  aspiring  to  a  heaven 
unexplored,  and  arched  over  huge  spaces  where  the 
eye  is  lost  in  the  gloom,  where  form  is  dissolved  in 
vagueness,  and  the  white  light  of  day,  rejected  in  its 
purity,  is  permitted  to  pass  only  upon  condition  that 
it  depicts  in  sombre  colors  the  pageant  of  the  life  of 
the  soul.  That  architecture  has,  whether  by  chance 
or  no,  a  symbolic  value,  as  well  as  one  purely  and 
simply  aesthetic,  will  not,  I  think,  be  disputed  by 
those  who  are  sensitive  to  such  impressions;  and,  so 
regarded,  architecture  has  been,  and  might  be  again, 
one  of  the  chief  expressions  of  religion. 

But  not  the  only  one ;  for,  within  the  temple  or  the 
church,  art,  in  its  greatest  period,  was  used  to  illus- 
trate the  legends  and  the  ideals  of  the  faith.  Such 
illustration  ranged  from  the  crudest  story-telling, 
devoid  of  all  aesthetic  significance,  to  works  in  which 
symbolism  was  amalgamated  inseparably  with  artis- 
tic beauty.  In  the  Greek  temple  was  throned  the 
[65] 


RELIGION 

statue  of  the  god,  the  perfection,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
form,  of  handling,  of  surface,  of.  all  that  of  which 
alone  the  artist  professes  to  take  account;  and,  on 
the  other,  what  for  the  layman  will  always  and 
rightly  be  more  important,  a  symbol  at  once  of  the 
physical  ideal  of  the  human  form,  and  of  that  par- 
ticular aspect  of  the  hfe  of  man  of  which  the  deity 
represented  was  the  type.  And  so,  again,  in  the 
Christian  Church  were  expressed,  in  color  and  form, 
not  only  aesthetic  beauty,  but  those  various  phases  of 
the  spiritual  life  of  which  the  Christian  religion  takes 
account,  the  ideal  of  redemption  by  suffering,  of 
maternity,  of  asceticism,  of  charity,  expressed  in  and 
through  the  legends  of  the  founder  of  the  religion  and 
of  the  saints.  In  tliis  way  religion  became  articulate. 
No  longer  a  mere  matter  of  feeHng,  it  confronted  man 
as  an  object,  and  only  so,  perhaps,  can  it  reach  its  full 
development.  Protestantism,  in  purifying  its  inner 
life,  has  gone  far  towards  destroying  its  outward 
form.  But  ^^^thout  expression  and  expression  in 
choice  and  deU  berate  form,  reUgious,  hke  other 
feehng,  tends  to  become  stagnant,  sour,  and  corrupt. 
It  needs  the  open  air,  it  needs  communion  and  inter- 
change ;  and  this  it  can  only  receive  in  the  finest  form 
through  the  mediation  of  art. 

But  it  is  perhaps  in  ritual  that  that  mediation 
reaches  its  highest  power.  Ritual  is,  or  should  be,  a 
[66] 


RELIGION 


product  of  two  of  the  greatest  arts,  literature  and 
music,  with  the  assistance,  perhaps,  of  an  element  of 
drama.  No  emotion  so  poignant  and  profound  can, 
I  think,  be  produced,  no  "  purgation  "  so  sanctifying 
be  effected,  by  any  other  means  at  our  disposal.  The 
effect  even  of  a  ritual  which  we  do  not  understand, 
or  one  with  the  intellectual  basis  of  which  we  are  out 
of  touch,  may  be  immense  upon  a  sensitive  spirit. 
How  much  more  that  of  one  which  should  really  and 
adequately  express  our  conviction  and  feeling  about 
life  and  the  world!  For  those  who  can  accept  the 
Christian  view,  the  Christian  ritual  must  be  their 
most  precious  possession;  but  for  those  who  cannot 
—  and  they  are,  as  I  believe,  an  increasing  number 
of  not  the  least  religious  souls  —  their  lack  of  intel- 
lectual assent  to  the  faith  weakens  or  even  nullifies 
the  effect  of  the  sjonbol.  And  if,  as  I  think  will  be  the 
case,  the  men  in  whom  the  rehgious  instinct  is  strong- 
est move  farther  and  farther  from  the  Christian  pos- 
tulates, a  ritual  which  shall  express  their  new  atti- 
tude will  become,  perhaps  is  already,  one  of  the  chief 
spiritual  needs.  But  a  ritual  cannot  be  invented;  an- 
tiquity appears  to  be  of  the  essence  of  its  power  — 
though,  to  be  sure,  rituals  must  have  had  a  begin- 
ning!—  and,  as  experiment  shows,  it  is  difficult  to 
take  seriously  any  new  attempt  in  this  direction.  Per- 
haps, therefore,  there  is  a  better  prospect  for  the  mod- 
[G7] 


RELIGION 

cm  world  in  the  development  of  art  towards  religion 
than  in  that  of  religion  towards  art.  Something  of 
this  kind,  it  is  clear,  was  the  idea  of  Wagner.  And 
without  raising  here  what  may  be  a  point  of  some- 
what acrimonious  dispute,  whether  any  of  his  operas 
can  appropriately  be  called  religious,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  there  might  be  a  music-drama  that  would 
be  such,  if  the  man  who  conceived  it  were  himself 
religious.  The  drama  of  iEschylus  is,  of  course,  a 
convincing  historical  example ;  and  so  is  such  a  medi- 
eval play  as  "  Everyman,"  which  has  recently  been 
presented  to  us  almost  with  the  effect  of  a  revelation. 
Such  drama,  I  cannot  but  think,  is  the  highest  form 
of  aesthetic  production.  And,  while  nothing  can  be 
further  from  my  purpose  than  to  enter  upon  the  not 
very  fruitful  controversy  as  to  the  proper  function  of 
art,  I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  record  my  owm 
feeling  that  never  have  its  wonderful  resources,  espe- 
cially in  the  region  of  music,  been  more  wantonly 
squandered  than  in  this  generation;  and  that  only 
their  deliberate  dedication  to  what,  say  what  men 
may,  is  at  bottom  always  their  most  serious  pre-oc- 
cupation,  so  soon  as  they  have  any  spiritual  pre-oc- 
cupations  at  all  —  I  mean  the  significance  of  their  life 
in  the  whole  scheme  of  the  world  —  nothing  but 
such  a  dedication  will  rescue  art  from  triviality,  or 
restore  life  to  the  dignity  of  which  it  is  capable. 
[68] 


RELIGION 

Such,  then,  in  brief  are  what  I  conceive  to  be  the 
relations  of  rehgion  to  the  other  ideal  activities  of 
men  —  to  science,  conduct,  and  art.  And  of  these,  I 
have  suggested,  the  most  important  is  the  relation  to 
science,  because  upon  science  depends  logically  not 
the  existence,  but  the  character  of  religion.  For  re- 
ligion, in  the  view  I  have  put  forward,  is  concerned 
with  the  place  of  our  ideals  in  the  structure  of  the 
universe.  And  that  place  it  cannot  itself  determine; 
it  must  wait  for  the  determination  of  the  intellect. 
But  on  that  point  the  intellect  has  as  yet  been  unable 
with  certainty  to  determine  anything;  and  conse- 
quently religion  tends  to  assume  different  characters, 
according  to  the  way  in  which  different  people  tend 
to  estimate  the  situation  under  the  influence  of  their 
temperamental  or  intellectual  bias.  The  advent  of 
positive  and  conclusive  knowledge  would  put  an  end 
to  such  differences;  and,  however  improbable  it  may 
now  seem  that  such  knowledge  should  ever  be  at- 
tainable, it  would  be  a  foolish  credulity  to  deny  the 
possibility  or  to  discourage  the  quest  of  it. 

Religion  so  conceived  is,  of  course,  a  very  different 
thing  from  that  which  purports  to  offer  a  special  rev- 
elation of  truth  on  the  very  points  which  I  am  assum- 
ing to  be  still  unknown.  Many  religious  people,  car- 
ing more  for  their  religion  than  for  the  truth,  will  no 
doubt  continue  to  believe  that  there  is  such  a  revela- 
[69] 


RELIGION 

tion.  But,  though  they  will  have  more  assurance,  and 
it  may  be  more  peace,  they  will  not  necessarily  have 
more  religion  —  and  they  may  easily  have  less  — 
than  those  who  candidly  recognize  the  claims  of  in- 
tellect. Their  road  through  life  will  be  simpler,  but 
their  knowledge  of  the  land  will  be  more  limited,  and 
their  range  of  emotion  proportionately  restricted. 
Religion  is  not  a  creed,  it  is  a  growing  experience; 
and  the  experience  is  necessarily  narrowed  by  any- 
thing that  narrows  the  intellectual  horizon. 

If  I  may  conclude  with  a  parable,  we  are  all  trav- 
elers through  an  unknown  country.  The  majority, 
I  think,  at  all  times  journey  with  their  eyes  on  the 
ground,  following  the  track  of  necessity  and  custom 
in  which  their  feet  were  set  from  the  beginning,  look- 
ing neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  but  at  most 
backward  or  forward,  and  learning  nothing,  nor  car- 
ing to  learn,  about  the  country  through  which  they 
pass,  whether  it  is  mountainous  or  level,  fed  with 
rivers  or  dry,  inhabited  or  solitary,  lit  by  sun  or  moon 
or  glimmering  stars.  These  are  the  men  without 
religion,  those  who  plod  in  blinkers,  as  secure  and 
unperplexed  as  it  is  possible  for  men  to  be  when  at 
any  moment  the  ground  beneath  their  feet  may  open 
and  swallow  them  up. 

Others  there  are  —  those  who  believe  in  some 
revealed  religion  —  whose  eyes  are  directed  not 
[70] 


RELIGION 

down,  but  straight  before  them,  following  a  beam  of 
light  that  springs  from  a  sun  still  below  the  horizon, 
but  one,  as  they  believe,  which  is  about  to  rise.  So 
dazzling  is  this  beam  that  the  land  all  about  it  appears 
to  be  shrouded  in  thick  darkness.  Only  in  the  path  of 
the  light  is  anything  to  be  seen,  where  it  illumines  a 
mountain-top,  gleams  on  a  far  river,  or  gilds  what 
perhaps  may  be  the  distant  sea.  Thither  the  travel- 
ers hasten,  without  fear  or  doubt,  counting  as  noth- 
ing the  hardships  of  the  road  in  their  certainty  of 
the  consummation. 

But,  again,  there  are  others  who  seek  no  such 
light  to  follow,  but  who  yet  refuse  to  walk  in  the 
beaten  track.  Desiring,  not  merely  to  pass  through, 
but  to  explore  the  strange  land,  they  look  freely 
above,  beneath,  around  them,  in  an  uncertain  glim- 
mer of  starlight  often  obscured  by  clouds.  All  about 
them  are  dangers  which  they  note  but  cannot  gauge, 
formless  terrors,  inexplicable  sounds,  stirrings,  am- 
bushes, contacts.  But  also,  here  and  there,  are  sug- 
gestions of  unutterable  promise  —  an  unexpected 
clearing  in  a  wood,  a  footprint  or  a  sign  left  by  some 
friendly  traveler  gone  before,  pale  flowers  beside  a 
brook,  the  note  of  a  nightingale,  a  peak  of  snow  like 
a  cloud  in  the  sky,  the  rising  of  a  new  star,  and  always 
the  tremulous  hope,  "  In  the  east  is  there  not  a  crys- 
tal gleam  ?  does  not  a  violet  lustre  begin  to  bum  upon 
[71] 


RELIGION 

the  gray?  does  not  the  planet  hanging  there  throb 
more  passionate  and  pale  ?  The  sun  we  saw  set,  will 
he  not  rise  again  ? " 

These  latter  it  is  who  have  the  religion  of  agnos- 
ticism; by  which  I  mean,  not  a  conviction  that 
knowledge  is  impossible,  but  an  uncertainty  as  to 
what  may  be  its  deliverance  —  an  uncertainty,  not 
of  indifference,  but  of  sensitive,  passionate  desire. 
Only  the  advent  of  knowledge  can  put  an  end  to  that 
uncertainty,  can  dash  or  confirm  the  audacities  of 
hope,  dissipate  or  establish  the  forebodings  of  fear. 
One  way  or  other  by  knowledge  the  character  of 
religion  will  be  determined.  But,  in  either  case,  relig- 
ion will  still  be  possible,  and,  for  those  who  possess 
the  instinct,  necessary.  What  depends  upon  knowl- 
edge is  not  religion;  it  is  approbation  or  condemna- 
tion of  the  world.  That  issue  we  cannot  shirk;  we 
can  only  settle  it,  if  at  all,  by  science;  and  the  at- 
tempt to  find  in  revelation  a  short-cut  to  the  solution 
does  but  divert  our  efforts  from  the  only  fruitful 
method  of  inquiry. 


[72] 


CHAPTER  IV 

FAITH 

In  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  attempted  to  state 
my  view  as  to  the  relation  of  rehgion  to  knowledge. 
Religion,  I  have  said,  does  not  give  us  truth.  And  as 
this  statement  to  some  of  my  readers  ^may  have 
seemed  paradoxical,  I  propose  here  further  so  explain 
what,  in  my  opinion,  is  the  relation  of  religion,  and  in 
particular  of  what  is  sometimes  called  "faith,"  to 
knowledge. 

My  point,  perhaps,  may  be  put  most  clearly  thus: 
If  a  man  says  "  Religion  gives  me  truth,"  I  would 
reply,  "  Then  why  not  call  it  knowledge  ?  "  For  truth, 
though  it  be  truth  about  God,  is  still  truth;  and  truth 
that  is  known  is  part  of  knowledge.  But  there  is  only 
one  method  of  knowledge,  viz.,  experience,  and  legiti- 
mate inference  from  experience.  Theology,  therefore, 
if  it  is  a  branch  of  knowledge,  must  differ  from  other 
branches,  not  in  its  method,  but  in  its  object.  If  we 
know  the  truth  about  God,  that  truth  is  scientific,  in 
the  broad  and  proper  sense  of  the  term.  It  is  arrived 
[73] 


RELIGION 

at  by  a  method  which  can  be  explainea  and  criti- 
cised, and  it  is  subject  to  constant  revision  as  exper- 
ience develops  and  intellectual  capacity  increases. 

This  much,  I  dare  say,  would  be  admitted,  per- 
haps even  eagerly  asserted,  by  many  theologians. 
My  next  point  takes  me  into  a  more  difficult  region. 
What,  I  would  ask,  is  the  kind  of  experience  on  which 
knowledge  about  God  and  other  objects  of  religious 
belief  can  claim  to  be  based  ? 

There  would  seem  30  be  two  possible  answers,  not 
incompatible  with  one  another.  First,  the  experience 
may  be  historical.  It  may  depend  on  a  record  of  the 
past.  And  such  record  is,  of  course,  part  of  the  theo- 
retical basis  of  Christianity.  On  this  point  I  have 
nothing  to  add  to  what  I  said  in  a  pre^^ous  chapter. 
Historical  truth  must  be  ascertained  by  historical 
methods.  But  it  is  my  own  personal  opinion  that  such 
methods  will  never  give  us  the  kind  of  certainty 
which  has  thitherto  attached  in  practice  to  religious 
beliefs;  and  that  men  will  become  increasingly  un- 
willing and  unable  to  base  their  scheme  of  life  on  data 
and  inferences  of  that  kind. 

I  pass,  therefore,  to  a  position  which  seems  to  me 
to  have  more  importance  for  the  future.  "  Whatever," 
it  may  be  said,  "  be  the  deliverance  of  history,  there 
is,  quite  apart  from  that,  in  the  direct  experience  of 
men,  a  perception  of  the  Being  we  call  God."  Such  a 
[74] 


FAITH 

statement  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  impor- 
tant that  could  be  made,  if  it  be  made  sincerely.  But 
it  is  pre-eminently  one  that  ought  to  be  challenged. 
And  that,  partly  because  of  its  importance;  partly 
because  of  the  indefiniteness  that  attaches  to  the 
word  "God";  partly  because  of  the  probable  com- 
plexity of  the  assertion  that  is  in  form  so  simple.  For, 
if  a  man  says,  "  I  know  God  by  direct  experience," 
what  is  it  he  knows,  and  how  "^  Has  he  had  a  "  vis- 
ion" ?  Possibly!  Such  visions  do  occur.  But  in  them- 
selves they  prove  nothing.  Everything  depends  on 
whether  or  no  there  is  any  real  object  corresponding 
to  them.  And  that  is  a  matter  for  scientific  inquiry. 
Probably,  however,  visions  of  tliis  kind  are  not  what 
is  meant.  When  a  man  says  he  has  a  direct  knowledge 
of  God,  he  will  probably  mean  that  he  has  a  sense, 
somehow,  that  there  does  exist  a  Being  who  is  good, 
and  loving,  and  powerful,  and  wise  beyond  all  expe- 
rience, of  ours.  Such  a  sense,  I  suppose,  many  people 
do  have,  genuinely  and  constantly.  And  there  is  no 
reason  a  priori  why  it  should  not  correspond  to  a 
reality.  But,  once  more,  whether  it  does  correspond 
or  no  is  a  matter  for  science.  The  sense  in  question,  if 
it  is  to  yield  knowledge,  must  be  analyzed  and  tested 
by  a  very  complicated  and  difficult  process.  And  I 
cannot  doubt  that,  were  such  an  analysis  to  be  made, 
the  original  and  apparently  simple  impression  would 
[75] 


RELIGION 

be  found  to  include  a  number  of  heterogeneous  ele- 
ments —  elements  of  tradition,  elements  of  desire,  ele- 
ments of  inference.  Thus,  the  man's  idea  of  God  will 
surely  be  derived,  partly  from  the  religion  in  which 
he  has  been  brought  up,  partly  from  his  own  reflec- 
tions upon  life  and  the  world;  and,  almost  certainly, 
it  will  have  been  affected  by  his  needs  and  desires, 
by  what  he  profoundly  wants  to  be  true.  And,  as  soon 
as  this  analysis  has  been  made,  it  will  become  clear 
that  the  single  and  apparently  simple  sense  or  im- 
pression which  he  calls  his  direct  experience  of  God 
has  no  more  vahdity  as  a  deliverance  of  truth  than 
the  elements  of  which  it  is  composed.  If  truth  is  to 
be  ehcited  from  it,  the  tradition  must  be  sifted,  the 
inferences  tested;  and  above  all,  the  element  of  desire 
ruled  out  as  prima  facie  irrelevant;  unless,  indeed, 
and  until  it  can  be  shown  —  as,  for  example,  the  new 
philosophy  that  calls  itself  "pragmatism"  endeav- 
ors to  show  —  that  truth  is  in  some  way  determined 
by  our  desires.  In  other  words,  any  truth  that  finally 
emerges  from  the  process  will  be  scientific  or  philo- 
sophic truth,  and  if  it  is  to  be  called  religious,  should 
be  called  so  only  with  relation  to  its  objects,  not  to 
its  method.  And  that  is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that 
religion  does  not  give  us  truth,  but  that  truth  is  only 
given  by  science. 

Now,  I  do  not  pretend  to  judge  what  may  be  the 
[76] 


FAITH 

result  of  the  kind  of  inquiries  I  have  been  suggesting 
above.  It  is  by  some  such  inquiries,  in  my  opinion, 
that  religious  truth  must  be  established,  if  it  is  to  be 
established  at  all.  But,  meantime,  it  is,  I  think,  true 
that  religious  questions  are  the  kind  of  questions 
about  which  many  serious  and  reflecting  men  do  not, 
in  fact,  and  will  not,  preserve  an  attitude  merely  of 
suspended  judgment.  Such  men,  I  think,  will  prefer 
to  describe  their  religious  position  as  one  of  faith 
rather  than  of  knowledge;  and  they  will,  perhaps,  feel 
that  it  is  fooUsh,  and  even  presumptuous,  to  expect 
to  attain  to  knowledge  on  such  subjects.  I  have  my- 
self no  sympathy  with  any  attitude  which  limits  a 
priori  the  possibilities  of  human  endeavor.  But,  see- 
that  most  men,  for  a  long  time,  in  proportion  as  they 
are  candid,  are  likely  to  be  intellectually  agnostic  on 
the  most  vital  questions  of  religion,  it  seems  to  be 
important  to  try  to  ascertain  in  what  sense  faith  may 
be  legitimate,  and  what  may  be  the  relation  of  such 
faith  to  knowledge. 

To  avoid,  so  far  as  possible,  all  ambiguity,  I  wish 
to  make  it  clear  at  the  outset  that,  in  using  the  word 
"faith,"  I  do  not  wish  it  to  carry  all  the  meanings 
that  attach  to  it  in  common  usage.  The  word,  for  in- 
stance, is  often  used  to  imply  a  faculty  which  has  the 
power  to  communicate,  not  only  knowledge,  but  the 
mo.st  certain  knowledge  to  which  we  can  attain.  It  is 
[77] 


RELIGION 

not,  of  course,  in  that  sense  that  I  use  the  term,  as 
will  be  clear  from  the  preceding  pages.  When  I  speak 
here  of  faith,  I  speak  of  an  attitude  which  is  not  pri- 
marily intellectual  at  all,  and  which  is  quite  com- 
patible with  —  nay,  which  depends  upon  —  intel- 
lectual agnosticism;  for  it  presupposes  that,  in  the 
region  to  which  it  applies,  we  do  not  know.  The  atti- 
tude I  would  describe  is  one  of  the  emotions  and  the 
will  —  the  lajang  hold,  in  the  midst  of  ignorance,  of 
a  possibility  that  may  be  true,  and  directing  our  feel- 
ing and  our  conduct  in  accordance  with  it.  In  its 
broadest  sense,  I  would  say  it  is  an  emotional  and 
volitional  assumption  that,  somehow  or  other,  in 
spite  of  appearances,  things  are  all  right.  This  gen- 
eral outline,  of  course,  may  be,  and  is,  filled  in  by 
every  and  the  most  varied  kind  of  content,  according 
to  the  traditions  in  which  men  have  been  brought  up, 
and  the  course  and  extent  of  their  knowledge  and 
experience.  But  very  commonly  it  expresses  itself,  in 
the  form  of  w  hat  is  called  a  "  belief  in  God  " ;  an  atti- 
tude, however,  which  does  not  imply  any  very  definite 
nor  any  very  uniform  conception  of  God,  but  is  apt, 
rather,  to  manifest  itself  negatively  in  a  kind  of  dis- 
tress if  the  existence  of  God  is  denied.  And  the  root 
of  that  distress  is,  I  think,  the  suggested  inference 
that  things  are  all  wrong  and  not  all  right ;  or,  to  vary 
the  phrase,  one  may  perhaps  say  that  faith  involves 
[78] 


FAITH 

a  volitional  assumption  that  things,  whatever  appear- 
ances may  suggest,  are  really  "worth  while." 

Now,  if  we  had  positive  and  complete  knowledge 
on  this  point  of  "  worth-whileness " ;  if  we  knew, 
instead  of  merely  conjecturing  what  may  be,  as  we 
say,  the  "  meaning  "  of  life;  if  we  could  see  Good  and 
Evil  in  their  true  and  ultimate  proportions,  and  finally 
sum  up  and  judge  the  world ;  there  would  be  no  room 
and  no  possibiHty  for  any  attitude  of  faith.  Instead, 
we  should  have  knowledge.  But,  in  fact,  our  position 
is  very  different  from  this.  We  know  that  there  is  Evil, 
we  know  that  there  is  Good ;  in  some  moods  we  may 
imagine  that  there  is  nothing  but  Evil,  or  nothing  but 
Good ;  but,  in  sober  truth,  we  cannot  reasonably  and 
finally,  on  grounds  of  knowledge,  form  a  judgment 
about  the  "  worth-whileness  "  of  life,  because  of  the 
many  important  factors  of  which  we  are  ignorant. 

Thus,  for  example,  many  men  feel,  when  it  is  put 
to  them,  that  the  question  of  the  value  of  life  depends 
very  largely  on  the  question  whether  individuals  sur- 
vive death;  and,  if  they  do,  on  the  kind  of  life  into 
which  they  pass.  It  is  one  kind  of  universe,  they 
think,  if  death  means  annihilation;  another  kind  if 
it  means  heaven  or  hell;  another  kind  if  it  means  a 
series  of  progressing  lives,  and  so  on. 

Such  possibilities,  many  people  hold,  are  of  vital 
importance  to  us;  and  these  people  are  apt,  in  the 
[79] 


RELIGION 

absence  of  knowledge,  to  adopt  towards  them  an 
attitude,  not  merely  of  agnosticism,  but  also  of  what 
I  have  called  faith,  they  select,  that  is,  among  the 
possibilities,  that  one  which  seems  to  them  to  give 
value  to  life,  and  concentrate  about  it  their  practical 
and  emotional  life.  The  attitude  they  thus  adopt  is 
different  in  its  origin  and  effect  from  an  attitude 
based  upon  knowledge.  It  is  more  precarious,  more 
adventurous,  more  exciting,  more  liable  to  ups  and 
downs.  But  it  may  be  equally  and  even  more  effica- 
cious upon  life;  and  it  is  not,  as  I  shall  try  to  show, 
necessarily  to  be  condemned  as  illegitimate. 

There  are  others,  again,  to  whom  the  fate  of  indi- 
viduals after  death  is  either  a  matter  of  indifference, 
or,  as  they  may  hold,  has  been  finally  settled  by 
science.  On  this  subject,  therefore,  they  will  have 
no  faith.  But  they  will  almost  certainly  have  faith  on 
some  subject.  Probably,  for  example,  they  may  cling 
to  the  idea  of  "progress."  And  that,  although  argu- 
ments may  be  adduced  in  its  favor,  is  a  doctrine  so 
far  from  being  established  that  acceptance  of  it  is, 
I  think,  commonly  the  result  rather  of  what  I  am 
calling  faith  than  of  intellectual  conviction. 

Or,  again,  a  man  may  be  indifiFerent  to  the  ques- 
tions both  of  a  survival  of  individuals  after  death 
and  of  the  progress  of  the  race,  but  may  feel  that 
the  important  point  is  the  existence  of  God.  People 
[80] 


FAITH 

who  feel  this  are,  I  suppose,  commonly  attached  to 
one  of  the  Churches.  But  there  may  be  men  not  so 
attached  to  whom,  nevertheless,  a  faith  in  God  is  the 
foundation  of  their  life.  It  may  be  a  personal  God 
that  they  conceive;  it  may  be  a  "  tendency  in  the  uni- 
verse"; it  may  be  something  which  they  prefer  to 
call  "Earth"  or  "Nature";  it  may  be  an  "Abso- 
lute"; but,  in  any  case,  it  is  something  not  them- 
selves and  greater  than  themselves,  something  which, 
by  its  mere  existence,  makes  everything  supremely 
worth  while,  overrides  and  subsumes  Evil,  intensi- 
fies and  makes  omnipresent  Good,  and  concentrates 
and  satisfies  in  itself  those  ideal  impulses  that  other- 
wise would  be  tortured  and  broken  about  an  imper- 
fect self. 

The  various  attitudes  towards  life  thus  briefly  indi- 
cated, different  though  they  be,  are,  nevertheless,  all 
examples  of  what  I  am  calling  faith.  They  all  involve 
a  voUtional  assumption,  not  based  upon  knowledge, 
as  to  the  " worth-whileness "  of  the  universe;  and 
their  differences  are  differences  as  to  what  is  it  that 
constitutes  "worth-whileness."  If  men  should  ever 
come,  by  thought  and  experience,  nearer  to  an  agree- 
ment on  this  point,  their  faiths  are  likely  to  approxi- 
mate more  than  they  do  at  present.  But,  meantime, 
the  point  I  wish  to  make  is,  that  faith,  in  some  form 
[81] 


RELIGION 

or  other,  seems  to  be  an  almost  necessary  condition, 
if  not  of  life,  yet  of  the  most  fruitful  and  noble  life. 
Almost  necessary,  I  say.  For  there  is  a  kind  of  pessi- 
mism which  is  nobler  than  most  optimism ;  which  is, 
so  to  speak,  active  in  its  character,  and  implies  rather 
a  passionate  love  of  Good  than  an  impotent  despair 
at  Evil.  But  that  is  a  rare  condition.  And  most  men, 
I  think,  are  significant,  and  find  and  make  life  sig- 
nificant, in  proportion  to  their  faith.  Of  the  practical 
value  of  such  faith  there  can,  I  think,  be  no  doubt. 
The  only  question  is  whether,  from  the  standpoint  of 
knowledge,  it  is  legitimate.  For  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  pursuit  of  truth  is  itself  one  of  our 
highest  practical  activities;  and  that  it  must  always 
be  wrong  to  hamper  or  pervert  that  pursuit  by  a 
predetermination  that  certain  beliefs  shall  not  be 
assailed.  Faith,  in  a  word,  can  only  be  legitimate  so 
long  as  it  occupies  a  region  not  yet  conquered  by 
knowledge,  and  so  long  as  it  holds  itself  ready  in  a 
moment  to  yield  its  place  so  soon  as  knowledge  ar- 
rives. Faith  should  stand  always  with  the  dagger  of 
science  pointed  at  its  breast.  It  need  not  fear.  It  has 
its  resurrections.  And  it,  too,  must  be  ready,  if  it 
would  save  its  life,  to  lose  it.  On  that  condition  it 
may  rightly  and  profitably  take  its  place  alongside 
of,  and  in  anticipation  of,  knowledge.  But,  once  that 
condition  is  neglected,  once  we  begin  to  say  "  I  be- 
[82] 


I 


FAITH 

lieve  though  truth  testify  against  me,"  once  we  echo 
TertulHan's  credo  quia  impossibile,  or,  with  Luther, 
in  our  zeal  for  what  we  suppose  to  be  reUgion,  assail 
reason  with  all  the  resources  of  a  German  BiUings- 
gate  —  from  that  moment  our  attitude,  instead  of 
being  legitimate  and  admirable,  becomes  one  of  the 
most  disastrous  and  the  most  immoral  which  it  is 
possible  to  assume. 

Faith,  then,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  am  using  the 
term,  is  distinguished  from  knowledge,  but  is  not 
necessarily  opposed  to  it,  though  it  may  easily  be 
misled  into  opposition.  And,  being  distinguished 
from  knowledge,  the  kind  of  support  it  gives  is  not, 
or  should  not  be,  intellectual  certainty.  On  the  con- 
trary, faith  would  seem  to  be  an  expression  of  the 
imagination  and  the  will,  rather  than  of  the  intellect, 
though  it  be  from  the  intellect  that  it  takes  its  form. 
It  is  closer  to  music  and  poetry  than  to  science.  It  is 
the  operation  of  our  passion  and  our  desire,  shaping 
in  anticipation  the  forms  and  features  of  the  un- 
known land  which  we  are  about  to  explore.  I  know 
no  better  metaphor  for  it  than  that  —  the  passion  in 
the  explorer's  heart,  dictating  the  vision  by  which  he 
is  led.  Because  there  is  an  horizon,  because  there  is 
space,  because  there  is  the  unknown,  therefore 
there  is  faith.  Columbus  had  faith.  But  what 
he  discovered  was  not  the  world  of  his  dream. 
[83] 


RELIGION 

Only,  the  dream  helped  him  to  discover  it;  and, 
spiritually,  we  are  all  in  his  position.  We  are  Co- 
in mbuses  setting  forth  on  onr  voyage.  We  need 
our  dream,  but  we  need  also  our  compass.  And  the 
confirmation  or  dissipation  of  the  dream  hangs  upon 
reality.  But  while,  in  this  sense,  faith  must  wait  upon 
truth,  it  is  also  true,  in  another  sense,  that  truth 
waits  upon  faith.  For  the  impulse  to  pursue  truth  is 
itself  a  form  of  faith.  We  hope  that  truth  is  obtain- 
able; we  desire  and  will  to  attain  it;  we  dream  its 
attainment  as  we  go  in  quest  of  it.  And,  but  for  that 
dream,  and  that  hope,  and  that  will,  we  should  never 
start  at  all.  Faith  is  the  sense  and  the  call  of  the  open 
horizon.  If  we  abstract  it  from  the  forms  in  which 
we  clothe  it,  from  the  specific  beliefs  which  are,  as  it 
were,  its  projection  into  the  intelligence,  it  presents 
itself  as  the  spring  of  our  whole  Ufe,  including  our 
intellectual  life.  It  is  the  impulse  to  grow  and  ex- 
pand; and,  just  because  it  is  that,  it  has  itself  no 
form,  but  may  assume  any  form.  It  is  a  taper  burn- 
ing, now  bright,  now  dim,  and  changing  color  and 
substance  with  every  change  in  the  stuff  it  consumes. 
The  frailest  thing  we  know,  it  is  also  the  least  per- 
ishable, for  it  is  a  tongue  of  the  central  fire  that  bums 
at  the  heart  of  the  world. 

THE  END 


THE  McCLCRE  PRKSS,  NEW  TOHK 


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